Movable Type 5 vs. WordPress 2.9
by Stuart BownessThis morning I noticed that Movable Type 5.1 was just announced. As one of the main alternatives to Wordpress what really shocked me was how similar the interface of Movable Type has become to Wordpress.
I think it is always a bad move when you stop thinking about how your product differentiates itself from the products on your competitors, and you start flat out cloning them. Is this redesign the result of a lot of design exploration that just happened to take them in a similar design direction to Wordpress? Or did they just look at Wordpress and think “Wow! That’s pretty good, perhaps we should just change our interface to look like that.” They should be thinking how they can take Movable Type to the next level, not just make it a WordPress alternative.
@Stuart – Hmmmm… I think you might be missing the point of why this is happening. In regards to marketing and branding type designs you would be absolutely correct. However we are talking about interface and application design. There’s a reason that every web browser has an address bar in the same location. There’s a reason why 90% of windows programs have the same type of menus and there’s a reason why most websites have a call to action graphic that takes up 2/3 of the height of the home page. If it was too radical a difference, people wouldn’t use it. If you make people think, the application is not working properly. I think moveable type has made a very smart move by doing this. They are doing exactly what Pepsi did to Coke… Tweaking an already good idea. Now that the interface layout is almost identical to wordpress, more wordpress users will be willing to try the new “flavor”. With wordpress gaining even more heavy hitting plugin’s like the famous PODS CMS, the Members plugin by Justin Tadlock, gravity forms, etc. MT will have to take some cues or face loosing the small market share it has in lieu of wordpress’ open source power tools.
wow, what a comment. i have been using MT since 2004, and all i can say is that wp has copied lots of features since then that it made you say wp is better than mt today.
To be completely honest I’m not that thrilled with the WordPress interface which is why I made this post in the first place. It is just a shame that Movable Type has chosen to follow WordPress and I don’t feel that they have set the standard so far in one direction that is comparable to the address bar in a browser whatsoever. Movable Type shouldn’t be a flavour of WordPress, it should be Movable Type. In the past this has been their strategy, and I was surprised to see it shift so much. There is plenty of room for improvement and innovation above and beyond the WordPress interface. Movable Type has chosen evolution rather than revolution.
haha, I’ll never stop loving “copycat” callouts, though I think it’s not relevant with the core of software ui design.
I’m not familiar with the CMS design of MT, but I find Wordpress’s to be good enough. I would think MT would want to differentiate itself more in other areas though. Enterprise has a different set of expectations.
Android is an example of software launching with a core UI design that has proven itself, and then pushes a smart selection of desirable features. I assume the magic is finding an elegant & natural implementation of new features.
But in some cases you want products to copy one another. I want more smartphone makers to mimic what works well with the iphone, and Nexus One. I strongly want Microsoft developers to understand why Apple consistently gets such high markings in UI design = )
What’s wrong with cloning a perfectly good design? Wordpress quite simply has one of the best designed user interfaces out there in the CMS market today. Not to clone it would most likely be a design mistake.
Bashing the MT team for making the most reasonable decision — i.e. choose the good part of Wordpress, it’s frontend, and put it on top of a solid backend (which Wordpress lacks) — doesn’t make since.
Open source software shouldn’t be about competition and trying to be “different”. It should be about making the best software. The latter what it seems like the MT team is interested in. I see no problem there …
Um…except didn’t WordPress suffer from an extreme breach in security whereas MovableType 5 has an incredible form of security in place.
http://www.movabletype.com/blog/2008/06/movable-type-a-history-of-secu.html