Category / Upgrading Software

Upgraded to MT4 September 23, 2007 at 2:05 pm

I took the plunge and upgraded the system to MT4.  Boy is it a lot different, and a lot more powerful.

I spent some time over the whole week in order to figure out the differences from the older versions, and I had a lot of learning about how css works.  I’ve really wanted to dig into css for a long time now, and this was a perfect chance.  I tend to learn how things like this work by trying and working off examples vs just reading tutorials or HOWTOs. 

Things I really like: The widget sets.  With the templates, the whole sidebar is now just an include statement to include my sidebar widget set.. and I can re-order how things appear, or add/remove things by just dragging and dropping:

images/MignetSidebarWidget.jpgThe tools for creating entries are more complex, and quite a bit different, but pretty easy to get used to.

I’ve got everything set on dynamic for now.  I want to see how it performs with all page views generated dynamically vs the old static way I used (mostly because several plugins only worked in static mode).  I prefer dynamic when the load isn’t too high because then any changes to any css settings, or templates or anything are reflected immediately rather then requiring rebuilds.  Plus when the whole thing is in an sql database is seems like it’s tailor made to be built on the fly vs rebuilt whenever told to, or when a comment is posted.

I did lose one thing from before that I did like.. the ability to list amazon items recently read or being read… or at least I haven’t figured out how to do it with the new 2.0 beta of the MediaManager plugin.

We’ll see if I keep up posts much (if at all) and how I like (or don’t) the new software as time goes on.