Let me illustrate the incredibly stupidity of this delimiter and its terrible impact on the export-import process. YOU CANNOT UPGRADE TO MT 4.X UNLESS YOU EXPORT YOUR DATABASE THROUGH THE DASHBOARD, BECAUSE A DATA DUMP WILL COMPETELY HOSE THE INSTALL, according to the manual. Therefore, if a commenter used a string of eight hyphens in their comment, for whatever reason, then the next line of text, even if it’s part of the same comment, would be imported into MT4 as a post. For example, last year I imported a 750 meg database with over 600,000 comments into an MT4 upgrade and MT generated at least 1200 bogus posts, composed of partial comments, which it assigned to the comments that followed the hyphens until another string of hyphens delimited an actual post. Of course, this threw the postID-comment relationship into complete disarray. Run Blog Janitor to your regret.

The import on this job was a four-day job, which did not count the lost time I spent trying to ascertain the reason for the bogus posts. I naturally thought it was operator error, never conceiving that Six Apart could be so dunderheaded. Two days later, however, I discovered that Anil is fond of his dashes. Dumb ass. Just to be fair, though, I’ll credit the same fool who devised the inline-stylesheets idea with this stroke of genius. Way to go, idiots.

For the record, I hope Six Apart goes bankrupt — not out of spite, but out of consideration for cyberspace. I believe it is in the web’s best interest to see the removal of Six Apart’s software scourge from its presence, once and for all, because Six Apart manufactures malware at best and a site-killing virus at worst.

Finally, as a post script, I want to specially thank Six Apart for the following boner, which is so unbelievable that I’m not sure I would believe it except that I saw it with my own eyes. Please stay with me on this one: Most hosts keep a password-protected firewall between blog software and the blog database. This is good protocol because you can’t be too secure. However, MovableType — in all its incompetence — actually displays the name of the database in every trackback and every search on the blog. It’s embedded in the URL. So whereas most databases are secured by a unique name composed of unique characters as well as a unique password, MT posts the name of the database in every single trackback URL. AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. Bend over, baby, here comes Six Apart.

You know, you really have to hand it to these boobs. They sure know how to act like code gurus but they don’t know Jack. And the tragedy of it all is that they charge people money for this abuse of the web and, sadly, people pay it.

Therefore, to everyone out there, please trust me on this: Do not ever, under any circumstances, consider using a Six Apart product for anything. You will regret it in ways you could never contemplate.

Thanks for letting me vent.

Thanks for stopping by.

That was exactly my experience of the Six Apart support over years. Although SixApart’s Kimberlie says things have changed. But then she would, wouldn’t she?

Even worse, however, and more unethical, if that’s possible, is Six Apart’s incredibly irresponsible customer support, which always, without exception, seeks to pin the problem on the user despite demonstrable evidence that points directly to the stunningly inept interface. For example, if you’re unfortunate enough to own a MovableType blog, try to place an image in a post by using the built-in CSS of any standard MT theme. And when the image does not float right or left (or wherever you placed it), with the appropriate margins pursuant to the CSS, open a ticket with the MT whiz-bangs to see what they say. Drawing from their incredible experience of working for irresponsible blowhards, they will find a reason to blame the user with a condescending and dismissive tone. That’s exactly what they did to me.

So I uploaded four different pics to a test post — one right, one left, one center, and one with none — and wrote the CSS as text into the post next to each pic so they could actually understand what I meant. One week later, yes a whole week as in seven days, MT support answered me by saying an inline stylesheet was overriding my CSS and they strongly advised me not to modify it. The same applies to their widgets. Try to modify a widget’s position with the CSS that comes with the blog, and you’ll try in vain. They hid that in a different inline stylesheet, if you can possibly imagine that. You’ll have widgets floating all over your page, or else downright invisible, simply because . . . . well, I have no idea why the Six Apart asshats would do that. They just did it, perhaps to keep the customer on the hook, which is their MO, or maybe because they’re just plain stupid. I don’t know and I don’t care. I do know, however, that I have never seen anything more useless and inefficient in my life than a MovableType blog, which advertises itself as fully customizable, as opposed to TypePad where the claim is not a far reaching, therefore placing TypePad in a distant second place for the worst interface ever made.

The average user on a wordpress.com blog, which is a free platform that is available to anyone with access to the web, has more bells and whistles than the poor dumb sucker who ever opened an account with Six Apart. Hell, even blogspot offers a better product — for free — than any of Six Apart’s interfaces. I’ll say it again. Six Apart is hands down the absolutely worst web firm ever known and I feel extremely sorry for anyone unfortunate enough to enter into agreement with them. You will regret it day and night until you happen across sites such as this, for which I am eternally grateful.

Thank you very much, FolioVision, for your remedy that saves those precious pics and permalinks. You have done everyone who surfs the Internet an invaluable service, as well as those of us looking for a way out of Six Apart, which is more akin to the Sixth Circle, at least in its effect on those who fall within its sphere.

You get a properly set up self-hosted WordPress site (we host them ours over at Foliopress.net) and the help of a dedicated WordPress shop who can fix techy things for you, leaving you to handle the fun stuff like choosing the theme and posting.

Typepad might be a good intermediate step if SixApart didn’t cripple the export. What SixApart are doing with image names as well now (long random numbers in a directory starting with a . – WTH is that?) is also atrocious. And I’ve never cared for the way they cut off post URLs mid-word (13 characters I think).

With the crippled export there is no sense going into Typepad as you can never leave when it comes time to. Well you can, but then you have to come and see us and it costs anywhere from $350 to $1000 to get out with your URLs intact depending on the size and nature of your weblog.

After Anil deliberately lied to me about export, I don’t trust SixApart either. As a company, they don’t tell the truth, nor do they treat users fairly.

Hanging onto your URLs is like a girlfriend or boyfriend who tells you: “You are free to leave me any time you want, but I’ll burn down your apartment if you do.”

Where do I go?