Never one to stick with the same software for too long, I’ve switched the blog from Textpattern to WordPress. WordPress has been creating a tremendous amount of buzz the past few days after the big MovableType 3.0 Licensing changes came out. Initially, I had looked into WordPress for my blog, but the software seemed to “rough around the edges.” Let me tell you that right now it’s the slickest thing I’ve used. The backend is quick and loaded with features. And stability isn’t much of an issue since version 1.2 came out yesterday.
WordPress also has a large developer base and is licensed under the GPL. Textpattern, on the other hand, is developed solely by one person (Dean Allen) and has a non-free license.
The switch over was relatively painless, I used the import script provided by the WordPress installation to move all my posts over. (I did heavily modify the script to maintain post id’s, categories, and links—If you are interested in my modifications, shoot me an email at froe0071@umn.edu).
The style sheet was graciously taken from the WordPress CSS Style Competition. It is entitled Buddha and was created by Hadley Wickham.
Look for new features soon, like Asides, Since Last Visit, Style Switcher, and Stats.
Update: The import-textpattern.php script that I used is now available. It’s still a little rough around the edges, but worked well enough for me. I had to turn magic quotes on for the script to work (set_magic_quotes_runtime(1); at the top of the file).
Brad Froehle 
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I am a (former) WordPress user who migrated the other way (to Textpattern). I enjoy both of them, but wanted to clarify your statement about Textpattern having a “non-free” license. From a post by Dean to the textpattern forums…
bq. “Let me state clearly that Textpattern is not going the way of paid licensing mitigated with free-as-in-beer crippleware, nor will it ever.
As of version g1.19, Textpattern is free, open-source software.
It is also available under a commercial license which permits proprietary usage, free of any obligation to release changes to the source code under an open-source license.
This dual-licensing model (similar to those used by MySQL, Trolltech, and others ) is intended to keep options open for everybody who wishes to use Texpattern, from an individual weblog publisher to a multinational corporation.”
I had the same concerns as you, but no more. Have fun.
Jack, you are totally correct. I’m subscribed to the “Textpattern Development Blog”:http://textpattern.com/dev/, and there was a post today “clarifying the licensing”:http://textpattern.com/dev/article/10/textpattern-is-open-source-software. While Dean had previously mentioned that it would remain free for personal use, he had never really indicated what license it was under. For that matter, the licensing is still quite vague.
That said, Textpattern and WordPress suit different niches in the same audience. WordPress for the GPL fanatics and people looking for something that’s a little tougher to totally customize but has a more intuitive backend; and TextPattern for those who want total control of everything at the cost of additional time spent.
I must admit, the one feature of TextPattern I really miss is the “half-baked pages” that it produced. TextPattern saved the body of the post as both the format you typed it in (ie, Textile) and the ‘compiled’ form (ie, straight HTML). This allowed for faster page rebuilds as the whole Textile engine wouldn’t have to be called for every post whenever a page was requested–only once when the article was saved.
maybe it’s too late, but you might have a look into WordPress into BLOG:CMS convertor 🙂 http://blogcms.com/extra/download – BLOG:CMS has quite a lot of features WordPress is missing..
Yeah right, I tried moving on to Blog:CMS with spactacular results. The developer abuses users who ask for support. And he demands that the first thing you do after waking up, is to thank him for his 1000 hours of work!
http://stuff.techwhack.com/archives/2004/08/17/blog-cms-and-wordpress/