Using MovableType?

piecewise asks: "Everyone seems to be using a Webblog these days and I'm interested in getting my company into it in a big way. We have three web servers and use Akamai to keep the website cached and happy. How many Slashdot readers are webloggers? Have you used MovableType, on a large scale? Are there any security issues? Security's very important. Is there a solution to the 'cache problem'? In other words, as people input messages, might the data running across the net become out-of-sync? Thanks for any thoughts/experiences."

Okay, I'll bite

[ArmorFiend]

For those of us (99% ?) who have never heard of movable type, what is it?

Movable Type is Six Apart's powerful, customizable publishing system which installs on web servers to enable individuals or organizations to manage and update weblogs, journals, and frequently-updated website content. [movabletype.org]

A security issue to watch for

[coj]

AFAIK, MT always requires that the web server have write access to the area where MT is installed. The only safe way to deal with this is to run the MT cgis under a suexec wrapper, so they execute as your user. Otherwise, you have to make the files world-writeable, which is a terrible, terrible idea. I've seen many posts on MT forums telling people to do a chmod 777 -- don't listen to them!

Large scale example

[darkpurpleblob]

About.com is an example large scale site using Moveable Type [sixapart.com].

How about a wiki instead?

[slackbp]

Are you sure MT is what you really want? I'll bet a wiki would be a better choice; we just installed one here at work and we're going crazy-go-nuts with it. We've installed PhpWiki [sourceforge.net], but Twiki [twiki.org] looks useful, too.

The "home" of wiki is at http://c2.com/cgi/wiki [c2.com], and the main book on the subject of wikis, The Wiki Way, has a companion website with downloadable code at http://wiki.org/ [wiki.org].

Briefly, a wiki is a website that allows one to create and edit web pages without having to mess with accounts and permissions--just type in one's text into an edit box, click "submit", and it's up and running. We use it as a knowledge base, and I'm going to use it to record billable events and notes.

"The simplest possible database that could possibly work"--Ward Cunningham

Re:What do you mean? Getting big into this?

[ar32h]

Movable Type works quite well with PostgreSQL.
I currently run MT on OpenBSD with PostgreSQL, setup was painless and the performance is great.
If Akamai decently handles changes in static HTML you should have no problems.
For a buisness setting Zope with Plone might be a better idea, It's workflow controls would probably be a necessity.