Upgrade from 5.11 to 5.12 hangs

Kraft,

How much your blog has entries or comments?

Sometime upgrading process takes a longer time than we guess.

(yes, pretty much time)

That might have been in upgrading process.

If your weblog cannot complete the process after a much minutes, and if you can access to your server via ssh and can handle the terminal, it is a way running "upgrade" file directory which is located under "installed-mt/tools" directory.

(It's not MT's official function, so be sure to do it at your own judgement.)

In case you are using fastCGI, you must restart Apache in order to avoid having the upgrade screen appear over and over again.

Kind Regards,
Mihai Bocsaru

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Mihai Bocsaru

Web Development
Movable Type Consulting
Six Apart Partner

http://www.pro-it-service.com/
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Movable Type Demo
http://www.movabletypedemo.org/

It had about 1,000 entries total. Left it overnight (10 hrs) and didn't complete. SSH didn't work. Not using fastCGI.

I ended up deleting the install and doing a fresh one.

That's also an option, but you have to use export and import to get your stuff available on the new install.

Not in my case. I saved the mt-config from 5.11, rmdir to /mt/, dropped in the new install of 5.12 and replaced the config with the only from 5.12.

Everything worked.

You were supposed to do this in the first instance, since you've said you've upgraded it :)

Fair enough. Been with MT since 2.5 but never had a problem dropping it into the existing dir. Although, MT 5 seemed to be such a radical departure that I should expect it not to act like MT had traditionally. (I suppose one of many reasons Open Melody branched off, eh?)

Either way, the developer community seems to have dropped off, so this was a legacy build as the various sites/blogs get migrated to a platform with a stronger community.

I defended MT for years, but got to the point where I just couldn't anymore.

Well, as a developer I don't have any problem with MT.

The tool is very strong, does static publishing and could be adapted for whatever publishing needs.

In your situation, the issue is that MT, but it is that you may not be familiar with notions like variables.

http://www.movabletype.org/documentation/appendices/tags/var.html

Your job could easily be done using a single page archiving template, but using mt:if statements in conjunction with variables to pass the folder name.

Once you spend a little time on it and learn this, you would see that the tool is really great.

I've built lots of sites with it, and I've been the one to tell to Six Apart over 4-5 years ago that I've used MT as publishing platform for different projects, not just blogs.

That made them think about transforming it from a blog tool into a publishing platform.

Kind Regards,
Mihai Bocsaru

With all due respect, I understand variables. I understand the platform change. I stuck with MT for a long time, put more than a few clients on to it. I've used MT for blogs, traditional sites with new design, migrating a design from a custom-build CMS from another developer onto a MT-build.

It's a great tool yes...

But, how many developers are in the community creating new plugins? Themes?

If you're a lone wolf fine adding every new feature by hand yourself, great, go for it. More often than not, any time I needed to add a new feature on MT, there is nothing in the plugin directory close to helping or what there is doesn't work. I've built a couple from hand, but when I see there are other platforms with a much more active developer community, I can't see why I should spend more time making a site with MT with no noticeable benefit to the client.

Even the online bulletin board, I got one comment the day I posted saying I should just wait longer, then this chain a month later.

I figured it out myself, as I have with most problems I've had with MT all these years, but if there's ever a crunch situation I need help on, I don't know if there are more than a couple of people still active.

I avoided Wordpress for a very very long time. I thought it was an immature tool for most of the time I've been with MT, but in the end, there is community support there. If I need to add something new (say forms that integrate in with the admin area or payment processing of a merchant account), there are people who have either done it or who could help figure it out.

Six Apart going through their changes and abandoning MT to the Japan office was the final factor to drive me away.

I've avoided WP as well for a few years, but I had to start working with it to satisfy some customers of mine which wanted to switch to it.

Since then when I get a request for an WP project, I'm taking it and I'm building up the WP site without any problem.

Seeing the troubles that one might end up with when running WP, especially very busy sites (despite the caching plugins available), I won't recommend a large site to switch to it.

I won't use it for my site either, which speaks by itself what I believe about wordpress vs. movable type.

Don't jump to conclusion regarding Six Apart US abandoning MT to the Japan office. Fact is that SAUS abandoned MT for much more time than when it was announced.

SAKK is handling movable type for a few years now and the amount of plugins and publications that are available in japanese is much more than what it is available in english.

When those resources would be made available also on English you would be surprised.

Kind Regards,
Mihai Bocsaru