This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about entrepreneurship, design, experience, simplicity, constraints, pop culture, our products, products we like, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago.

Kevin Ballard 24 Jul 06

Perhaps you should drop Movable Type and switch to a Rails-powered blog? ;)

shcn 24 Jul 06

sounds serious. hope you have backups.

Duarte Carrilho da Graça 24 Jul 06

How about Rick Olson’s mephisto?
( http://weblog.techno-weenie.net/ )

Greg 24 Jul 06

Actually, I’m kind of shocked that you’re using Movable Type. I’d assumed all along that you were running some proprietary system.

Edgar 24 Jul 06

I realize that 37signals has been using Movable Type (MT) well before Rails even existed.

I am curious to know though, why move off of Movable Type (MT). Does it not provide some type of functionality that you need? If it’s not broke, don’t try to fix it type of thinking.

Just curious.

ben 24 Jul 06

Just so you know, I saw this screencast once, and it had some guy from Denmark making a blog, in like, 15 minutes. Can’t remember the guy or the framework he used though.

;-)

Ken Walker 24 Jul 06

“We’re definitely going to roll our own blog engine for our own use here on SvN (no plans to make that into a product).”

Why spend the time and money when you could go with Wordpress?

http://wordpress.org

Ken Walker 24 Jul 06

“We’re definitely going to roll our own blog engine for our own use here on SvN (no plans to make that into a product).”

Why spend the time and money when you could go with Wordpress?

http://wordpress.org

Ken Walker 24 Jul 06

Ugh, loving MT right now, by the way.

Ken Walker 24 Jul 06

Ugh, loving MT right now, by the way.

Edgar 24 Jul 06

Jason,

Other than the apparent performance problems related to submitting posts and comments, what does MT lack?

Also, I’m curious to know if performance would be better if 37svn was rendered as Static instead of Dynamic (PHP).

Su 24 Jul 06

Do you make use internally of the monthly and category archives you’re having MT build? You don’t actually link to them from any obvious place.

I’ve also found at least two syndication feeds other than the one that redirects to Feedburner.

I can’t explain your database issues, but you might start with doing some housecleaning to take care of speed considerations.

Mark 24 Jul 06

You also might want to check your spam filters. Your achives are littered with them — big time.

Ian Fenn 24 Jul 06

As well as the basic housekeeping stuff Su mentioned, perhaps you could also run MovableType under fastcgi if you’re not already doing so.

DW 24 Jul 06

37signals

Have you guys upgraded MT to 3.31?

I ask b/c in the newiest release there is a significant performacnce enhancement for comment posting speed.

For more information, see http://brandon.fuller.name/archives/2006/02/22/12.37.50/

And of course, if you follow the tips below combined with using version 3.31 - you should be having any performance problems.

http://www.sixapart.com/pronet/articles/how_to_speed_up.html

DW 24 Jul 06

It’s somewhat ironic that Typo (a Rails blog / cms) released 4.0 today.

http://scottstuff.net/blog/articles/2006/07/22/typo-4-0-0

Jeff Croft 24 Jul 06

I remember asking here at SvN ages ago why you guys weren’t running Typo or a homegrown Rails-based solution. Jason said, “because if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. It works fine for us.”

Which is a perfectly reasonable explanation, and I would have probably done the same. But now it’s slow, and broke. So I guess it’s time to fix it. :)

Timothy Appnel 24 Jul 06

What database are you using to power MT anyway? I’ve never heard of MT data corruption other then with BerkeleyDB which Six Apart has been recommending NOT be used for years now. Its generally slow and prone to corruptions.

Pete Lasko 28 Jul 06

That should read s-s-something wrong with the comments.