I don't know where I'd heard that Movable Type was free again, but it evidently wasn't on Movable Type's own site. If anything, their rates seem to have gone up from what I remember. This is a bit of a bummer, because I'd been looking to upgrade. I want to add two new bloggers (my studio-mates Jelena Saiso and Calvin Bexfield), which requires a non-restricted version of the software. I also want to re-enable comments, which requires the latest and greatest in anti-spam provisions, otherwise all of Xepher.net goes down again. I could of course move to Wordpress or even WillowCMS, but I have two good reasons to stick with Movable Type:
1. I hate it when URLs change, and don't have time to hunt through old blog entries to change links to the new URLs;
2. Fielding support questions from my co-bloggers is difficult enough without having to learn a new interface myself. I'm not a Movable Type expert and have to look for answers in the Help pages and my own old template code, but at least I am usually able to find the answer. In Wordpress, I'd know no more than the user asking the question. In WillowCMS, I'd know a little more than my users, but frankly, I'm unwilling to let other people onto my Willow installation until there's a simplified interface they can use. Otherwise I'd be answering questions all day, or rather, Mithandir would be answering them for me, which would be a terrible way to thank him for the work he's done. And there's so many things I haven't got around to implementing that a Willow-ed version of the blog would need. It would have advantages in terms of comic/blog integration though.
Bummer. What to do? Looks like I've got a bullet to bite here - actually, upgrading Movable Type after more than two years would be hair-raising enough considering what happened the last time.
