A few more notes on MT4

So many hours burned, so many bruises.  The final result?  A working, spanktastic copy of MT4, chilling mackadaciously and looking good.  How did I achieve this, after so many entries of how unbelievably painful the process is?  The solution is very simple.  In fact, I should really have thought of it earlier, but I wasn't thinking clearly.

I exported all my entries.  I blew away the MT directory.  I did a fresh install into a fresh database.  Then I went in and re-imported all my entries. 

This method is not without its caveats.  All my customizations are gone, my theme modifications are gone, heck, my themes are all gone.  My images are all gone.  That means I have to go through each entry that had an image associated with it and 'fix' it.  Fortunately, I don't have that many images, since I only recently discovered the joy of adding pictures to my unbelievably engaging text.  Still, it's a touch on the annoying side, for sure.

Now, on to The Good News.  I've had a chance to give the MT4 interface a nice run, it's been put through some paces, and I've taken the opportunity to do a few things here and there.  It's good.  Really, really good.  Significantly better than it used to be (and I kinda liked the ol' 3.3 interface).  It's a good bit better than Wordpress or even Textpattern (which I love for its sheer flexibility).  Oh, and the speed issue?  Apparently the sluggish behavior of MT was due to my attempts at upgrading.  Now that I've done a fresh install, I'm having no speed issues whatsoever.  Oh, so very nice. 

The final verdict: I take back all the nasty things I said about MT4 - well, most of them anyway.  In the end, totally worthy.  But be prepared to do it The Hard Way - there's no easy way to eat a Rhesus.