I hope.

If you have trouble reading the blog over the next day or so, please a) let me know and b) check back.

I’m having to re-do my templates from scratch, apparently.

This morning, I’ve upgraded my blog from MovableType 3.0D to 3.11. I did this partly because I’m tired of dealing with blog spam and I’ve heard the mt-blacklist plugin is part of the new upgrade capabilities, or at least it’s compatible.

This blog article is a “throw-away.” I’m really just testing to see that nothing is broken before moving to the next step of trying to alter some of my templates — which should change the look of my site a little — and implementing new features.

One feature I hope to implement is to allow people who register with the site to be able to post comments without the requirement for me to approve the posts. Another, of course, is the blog spam blocker, mt-blacklist.

At any rate, as I said, this entry is a “throwaway”; I’m writing it to test that I can still make posts. Next, I’ll take a look at how comment posting works.

Oh, one sidenote. Ever since they “upgraded” the MovableType website, two things have been majorly broken.

1. My blog name shows up there, in the “Recently Updated” list, as Unspun™ instead of Unspun™ — and they’ve been unwilling or unable to fix this. Well, guess what? After the upgrade, that same “brokenness” appears in my administration consoles for the blogs. 🙁
2. The “Recently Updated” list on their website, upon which I’ve heavily relied to attract readers in the past, appears to only update periodically. They insist it works for them, but when I visit there after a post, my name doesn’t always show up. If I hit reload about 500 times, it might eventually update the list and then I’ll sometimes see my blog name (incorrectly presented, as noted above) somewhere further down the list. Sometimes, though, it’s already passed off the list, apparently. And since that “fix” of theirs, I get more referrals now from other blogs than from MovableType’s Recently Updated list. Their “solution” is for me to remove my update key, so that my name never shows up in their “Recently Updated” list; that way, they say, it won’t show up incorrectly. Either that or, they say, I could change the name of my blog so doesn’t show that it’s trademarked. (Of course, this may cause potential legal issues when I pursue violators of my trademark.) Since one reason I paid the hundreds of dollars I’ve paid to them was for the right to be on that list, this is a royal bummer.

Oh, well. I’m too into MovableType now to change. I would recommend, however, that you consider carefully whether you want to use MovableType yourself. If you can live with an unresponsive support team, it’s a good package.

Just don’t expect any help.

Frankly, if I had it to do over again, I might pick a different package.