Upgrading from MovableType 2.64 to 3.1

I've gotten to a certain point in my life where I don't need to be on the bleeding edge of any application. The software running my site just happens to be one of them. After hearing of the latest version of MovableType a few months back, which happens to be the aforementioned software, I decided to hold off.

Then yesterday, I got lambasted with about 150 spam comments. I couldn't come up with a quick and easy way to delete them all. I took a half an hour of my time to clean and rebuild. Thus, I decided to upgrade to something easier to manage.

I've read a little bit about WordPress and read Matt's web site all the time. It was a compelling option. But the site didn't offer any information on upgrading from MovableType (at least, not in a noticable location), which would be a great way to get people to switch.

Instead, I just upgraded to the latest version of MovableType. I felt I could be confident in a painless upgrade and get the features I was looking for.

I was close.

The upgrade was swift. It took longer to upload the files than it did to perform the upgrade. But feature wise, it doesn't seem that much more impressive over 2.64. The improved comment viewing will certainly allow me to delete the comment spam faster but I'm not sure what it'll do to limit the amount of spam comments coming in. It's a bit of a Catch-22 because I don't want to limit users in any way of commenting legitimately to a post. In being so open, I leave myself open for spam.

Comment throttling or comment moderation based on keywords would really be much more helpful. Here's hoping that this kind of functionality can find its way into future versions.