Now that some of the dust is settling on the recent 3.0 developer release, things are looking MUCH better than they did just a little over a week ago. My suggestion is to hang in there until the final release is announced.

Specific to one of your comments, “Give me more and better tools for managing comments that does not force me into a 3rd party service.”, The new version of MT handles comments VERY well. Although I like MT-Blacklist as a comment spam solution, I think the new features of MT 3 are even better. If comment spam is a big enough issue and you haven’t installed MT-Blacklist, then doing the upgrade with the developer version may be worth it.

The inital confusion regarding authors and weblogs shocked a lot of people, including me, but it’s becoming clear that the pricing is a lot less than we first thought. Also, the 3.0 developer release isn’t the feature rich application that we were all hoping for, however, it is a step in the right direction and is a big improvement in a lot of little ways.

Personally, I paid for a personal licence, although I qualify for the free version. I like 3.0 very much and I think there’s a lot more features that will build upon 3.0D that will make it a must have.

So my advice is to hang in there and make the upgrade when you feel comfortable.

Thanks for the response and for the offer. I respect the fact that you’re trying as best you know how to get this move to a more formal paid licensing structure right.

However, I already pay money to a web host to handle my DNS and email. For me, it makes no sense to pay a hosting fee to TypePad when I have already sunk money into web hosting elsewhere AND I have both the interest and ability to run my own weblog. I also fall into the category of people who actually like to tinker. Put it together, and TypePad’s services are not something I’m interested in.

And I’d like to take this opportunity to urge you in the strongest possible terms: if you don’t have any people with significant marketing/product management experience on staff, hire some very soon. As good as you are at what you do, marketing, product development, and market research are clearly not your areas of expertise. Part of being a good entrepreneur is recognizing what you’re not good at and hiring to fill those holes.

I wish you and the rest of the crew at SixApart all the best.

You say:

“Give me a CMS that does not require me to rebuild my site because I add one link to my links list. Give me more and better tools for managing comments that does not force me into a 3rd party service. Give me more and better tools for creating and mangaing templates. Make it easier to integrate graphics into posts, or even a whole photo album.”

We do have a tool that does all that. It’s called TypePad. TypePad isn’t a second class citizen. We created it because there are people who want to have a weblog and don’t want to worry about installs and upgrades. TypePad was created because more and more people were coming to Movable Type and they just couldn’t set it up. The tech know-how that was needed was just too much.

If you would like to try TypePad (and since you’re willing to pay), let me know and I can send you a discount good for three months. You don’t even have to enter your credit card. If others want to, then send me an email as well.

Movable Type serves a purpose for many people and TypePad serves a purpose for many others.