The day after I posted my rant about Movable Type and the pain of upgrading, Anil (one of the very smart folks at Six Apart) replied with a comment inviting suggestions on how to improve.

For everyone's edification, here's what I shared in response. My suggestions:

1. One big honking image/button/something on the home page that says "Upgrading Instructions". Or somesuch.

2. A link from that big image/button/something to a single web page on your site that goes over, step by step, what users have to do. As in Step 1, Step 2, nice, easy to read stuff.

3. Make sure it says at the very top of the page what versions (past, and what you're upgrading to) these instructions work for, with link to past versions of the page if the instructions differ.

Other things to think about:

1. Why can't I back up all of my templates easily? Sure, I can export all of my posts in case the whole upgrade tanks, but if it tanks, I'm also stuck potentially with screwed up templates and configurations. These should also be exportable.

2. Why not make an "upgrade" button in the system? It can check for updates, have links (via an XML feed) to the newest version to download, and link to the export functions for backup before getting started upgrading.

And finally a huge problem I had with the newest upgrade:

For the first time EVER, it seems, your product came with .cgi files that live somewhere other than the program root. What that means: when I upgraded and then clicked on those nifty new links, they didn't work and I had to go back through and find whatever .cgi files needed CHMOD-ing to 755 in order to work.

MT is becoming far too large a program to expect users to be rooting around in dozens of subcategories CHMOD-ing .cgi files. That's just ridiculous, don't you think?

It took me a while to respond to Anil, so I'm sure it will take at least as long to hear back, but I'm hoping these changes help to make the next upgrade less painful...

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