WordPress vs. MovableType: Which Is Best For Large Traffic Sites? A Video Interview With Wordpress Matt Mullenweg

WordPress or MovableType? Robin Good meets Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress.org, and asks him about the advantages of using WordPress versus adopting a long-established solution like MasterNewMedia own publishing platform: MovableType.

Matt Mullenweg - Photo credit: Robin Good

WordPress, born back in 2003, is the most popular independent web publishing platform as well as one of the most successful open-source solutions in this sector. Wordpress, with its tens of thousands of users around the world and has also clearly established itself as the most popular blogging platform out there.

The possibilities of enhancing your web site design and accessibility via hundreds of different plugins and themes is very attractive. And there's a very large community of users behind WordPress, so you get extensive support and advice everytime you need it.

In this short video interview, Robin challenges Matt to go beyond the surface: is WordPress as professional as MovableType when dealing with large traffic sites?

And you? What would you choose for your own site? Let us know in the comments area, but make sure you specify which are the reasons that make you prefer one over the other.

Here below the video interview alongside its full English text transcription:

Intro by Daniele Bazzano

WordPress Vs. MovableType - Video Interview With Wordpress Matt Mullenweg

Full English Text Transcription

Intro

Robin Good: Hi guys, this is Robin Good for MasterNewMedia, and guess what?

There's some guy here, he tells me... but I don't believe him.

What's your name again?

Matt Mullenweg: Matt Mullenweg.

Robin Good: Oh, so he isn't the guy I was thinking of...

Anyway, this guy is very interesting because he says he's the guy who has kind of put together that incredible tool that you all use to publish everything online that's called WordPress.

Wordpress, sì, yeah, that one!

He's the guy who did it! Matt Mullenweg. Can you believe it? He's right here.

Matt, I want to get closer so if they ask: "Did you touch him?" Yeah, I'm touching, look, I'm touching, he's real!

 

Advantages of WordPress

Robin Good: Matt, unfortunately I'm a MovableType user. I write in English and I serve 70 per cent of my readers, about a million visitors per month, come from all kind of countries: India, Canada, North America and...

Matt Mullenweg: Similar to our traffic actually. About two-thirds of our traffic is international.

Robin Good: So we have something in common. I've been in envy of the people using WordPress because of the many advantages they have. Nonetheless my IT people said: "You know, you get some advantages with MovableType. You got lots of traffic and things, don't just jump over to WordPress because you like it".

Matt Mullenweg: What advantages do you think you would get?

Robin Good: The advantages I see as an ignorant, non-technical man, is that I have a lot of flexibility in adjusting my design, and customizing things.

We're going crazy, and asking two, three webmasters to adjust things for days and days until they work.

And I would have a great community of people helping me out and I can ask just about anyone things. Which I cannot do with MovableType. It sometimes gets to be very hard. These are the two key things that I think we would get .

Matt Mullenweg: Alright. Both sounds good.

 

Good Reasons To Switch To WordPress

Robin Good: I'm sure you've been asked many times about MovableType and why would you suggest to somebody to switch. Is there good reason enough for a large traffic site to go from MovableType to WordPress?

Matt Mullenweg: In my opinion the reasons you just described are both valid. There is a great the community around WordPress. Here in Italy at WordPress Italia. They are wonderful. We have a hundred people working here in Italy, in Milan, and that's pretty nice. And also, you didn't mention it but there are a lot of plugins available.

Where MovableType used to have more plugins in the biggest development. Over the past years few years that has really shifted to WordPress . And we now have 1300-1400 plugins in our directory, and that's pretty powerful. You can do a lot with it.

 

Is WordPress Good For Large-Traffic Sites?

Robin Good: From the standpoint of holding up to the demands of having many different users at the same time. Is there any key difference between the two systems?

Matt Mullenweg: Yes we have very different model of publishing, but I think that if you look at the Technorati 100, Wordpress is the most used blog platform, of the largest blogs in the world. We host anything from CNN's blogs, or I can has cheezburger, which does millions of pages per day.

It can stand up... if it's properly configured, it can stand up to any amount of traffic that you want.

 

Static vs. Dynamic Sites

Robin Good: You know better than me how this web thing is. People really like things not to be too hype: "I'm good, and this is better..." They really want to know the truth behind things and here I realize that something to defend any position because you've got a great market already.

My point is: what people tell me about MovableType having some advantages in terms of the way pages are put out. Caching, static, dynamic. How relevant is that in your opinion and how much can a set bring the performance of large web sites?

Matt Mullenweg: MovableType is static by default. And WordPress is dynamic by default. In my opinion the future of the Web is dynamic. Everyone has a customized experience on the Web.

For performance reason there is a plugin that will turn Wordpress into static performance, WP Super Cache and it makes the performance just the same that you get with something that produces static files like MovableType.

But where the static doesn't really perform... Do you get a lot of comments... a lot of interaction on your blog?

Robin Good: Yeah.

Matt Mullenweg: You're not constantly rebuilding these files. They are being generated and pulled in. But it also allows you more flexibility. Say you want to have random elements on every web page or customize it. Maybe have people be logged in and get a special experience. That's so much easier when you have a dynamic site.

Robin Good: You're saying if I have a lot of interaction, lots of things that need rebuilding frequently, it's better to go your way than MovableType's way?.

Matt Mullenweg: I think that both will work there are large blogs, like your own, that use MovableType very successfully. You can make either one work. A reason to switch I would say is more the stuff we talked about earlier.

Robin Good: Thank you Matt, I appreciated that.

Originally shot and recorded by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on October 29th 2008 as "WordPress vs. MovableType: Which Is Best For Large Traffic Sites? A Video Interview With Wordpress Matt Mullenweg"