I’ve been blogging for about four years now. Before working mainly with WordPress, I’ve tried Blogger, BlogCMS (a variant of Nucleus), and I’ve dabbled with Movable Type and even Textpattern. But then I tried WordPress and I got hooked. One of the reasons I stick to WordPress is that there are a ton of themes out there. And these are mostly free. And yes, while not every theme out there is up to par in terms of standards, fact is you can easily find themes that are good and suitable for your needs, or can be easily tweaked to your specifications.

Word’s out that Six Apart has moved Movable Type back to a free model (started out as free, then moving into a pay software, then now back to pro bono), and is now even shifting to open source. You see, before WordPress was WordPress, Movable Type was at the top of its game. But then they moved to a paid model, just as WP was getting popular. The rest is history. Who’s at the top of the game now?

Some people would think that it’s too late for Movable Type, given the dominance enjoyed by other platforms. One particular reason cited is the availability of themes. True, there are thousands of WordPress themes out there, and not to mention tons of plugins, too, and friendly (arguably) support by the community.

With regard to themes, I think one thing that WordPress users enjoy is the flexibility of WordPress as a platform. I’ve used WP as a content management system for some sites that I helped create. Themes can easily be modified for use as such. Your site doesn’t have to look like a blog, but it can be powered by WordPress. Great, isn’t it?

Only time will tell if WP will be overtaken, and if Movable Type will be the one to do this. Until that time, WP themes would beat others in terms of flexibility, availability and, yes, even quantity. That’s one of the reasons Free WordPress Themes exists!