Yesterday saw the news that Yahoo! and MovableType have partnered to provide a simple hosting solution for bloggers. The code in MT has been jigged to work better with FastCGI (that Y! servers run on) and is said to be a lot faster than a regular MT intall, and Jeremy tells us that "you don't need to be a small business to use it. Individuals and Big Business can use it equally well". The question now is, how viable a solution is Yahoo! hosting for the professional blogger?
The first question that I had was "how much control does the blogger have?" - I mean, it's all very well having fast hosting, but what about the templates, can i run ads, can I run Adsense?
I spoke to Ginevra Kirkland at SixApart, the company that owns MT, Typepad and LiveJournal and she told me that yes, you have full control of templates, and to make it easier, the StyleCatcher plugin, which helps manage styles and templates comes pre-installed.
So ok, good news on the control front, but do you want to host with a Search engine? Some time back I'd have said no right off the bat, being a slightly paranoid type that dislikes the idea of placing business sites with a company that ALSO runs a Search engine that affects my traffic, and may very well provide income via it's publisher network in the near future. Reading Jeremy enthuse about their hosting, and taking into account his bias of course though, makes me think that it may be worth exploring when it comes online.
There's also a rumour going round that they may add Wordpress support aswell - and THAT is what would probably tip the balance for me.
Anyone here think likewise? Anyone going to try it?
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