After testing out Movable Type and Blogger, I decided to give WordPress a try. I didn’t have a lot of experience in manipulating MySQL databases, but I was decided to learn it, since WP is using SQL databases.

So, after downloading the small 300KB zip file, I installed it in my local PHP server directory. At first, I got some problems in installing the “software” because I had to create a database with PHPMyAdmin, which was a pain to do, for me. And after understanding how SQL is working, with users, tables, etc; I got it.

The user interface is pretty interesting. Better than Blogger’s one I must say. I don’t know if it’s better than MT’s one, because I never reached this step in the process of trying Movable Type ;) Also, a nice function of WP is the Import System. You can import your posts from MovableType, Blogger, GreyMatter, LiveJournal, etc. But the perfect Import option for me was the RSS 2.0 import. WP retreives all your posts written in your RSS feed. Isn’t that wonderful? OK, it can’t import entries’ comments via the feed… but I guess it does when importing from MT or Blogger.

But I found it quite hard when it comes to editing templates. A load of XHTML tags with PHP variables. How can you integrate an already existing CSS layout to this? I guess it’s impossible. You have to design a new layout to match WP items.

In conclusion, WordPress is the best blogging software I ever tested. If the author, Matt Mullenweg, would be able to code a Cutenews import module (which would import categories and comments correctly), I’d switch to it right after.