Weblog System Features Compared 269
prostoalex writes "The question of the best weblogging system out there arises quite often, especially after the new licensing scheme introduced by MovableType. Here's a rather detailed breakdown of currently popular blogging and content management systems. Out of 11 software packages, 10 run on any server with variations of Perl/PHP and MySQL/PostgresSQL, and one requires Windows and .NET Framework. 4 are licensed under GPL, 3 are under BSD. Mark Pilgrim explains why licensing is suddenly important."
Great site & Favs (Score:5, Informative)
Check it out - OpenSourceCMS [opensourcecms.com]
My current favorites:
Mambo [mamboserver.com]
Wordpress [wordpress.org]
E107 [e107.org]
and last but not least Geeklog [geeklog.net]
dancing (Score:2)
Re:Great site & Favs (Score:4, Informative)
Also, side-by-side CMS comparison matrix (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Great site & Favs (Score:3, Informative)
xaraya [xaraya.com]
Re:Great site & Favs (Score:3, Insightful)
The sites mentioned in the other responses (OSCOM and CMSMatrix) are better.
Re:Great site & Favs (Score:4, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I'm not sure how MANY people it actually takes to bring down a page, but this was a huge number of visitors for my site. Anyone know how many people are on Slashdot at any given time?
--
New deal processing engine online: http://www.dealsites.net/livedeals.html [dealsites.net]
Re:Great site & Favs (Score:3, Informative)
You Missed the BEST CMS out there (Score:4, Informative)
GeekLog [geeklog.net] is the best and most secure PHP CMS out there.
On top of this it is easy to use and setup.
How you missed GeekLog I will never know.
Re:You Missed the BEST CMS out there (Score:2)
Re:You Missed the BEST CMS out there (Score:5, Informative)
Re:You Missed the BEST CMS out there (Score:3, Informative)
I don't see a few comments as a serious issue when they are easily dealt with.
Within your config.php there is already the ability to have a speedlimit for comments, so I don't know why you would make a hack for it.
CityDesk (Score:5, Interesting)
Whatever your opinion of him, he makes good software.
my own? (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:my own? (Score:2, Funny)
That's nothing. Back in my day we didn't have them fancy modem thingies. We sent the site raw binary data through the telegraph. Sure it took awhile to get anything worth reading, but damn, weren't we were satisfied just knowing we'd accomplished something . . .
Re:my own? (Score:5, Insightful)
Could someone please edify me (and consequently the rest of the viewing audience who might not yet have weblogs) why we might find it desirable to use dynamic methods to update and display a plain text journal?
And for us old time teletype jockeys who are jacks of all trades but masters of only vi who have never figured out what an IDE might possibly be good for, how do the benefits of weblog packages offset the disadvantages that are the raison d'etre of this Slashdot article, vis a vis, licensing issues (not to mention their attendant prices).
KFG
Re:my own? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:my own? (Score:2, Insightful)
MoveableType is a radically better experience. The Luddites who are trying to say otherwise are simply wrong
Re:my own? (Score:3, Funny)
Wow, it sounds like you pulled that straight out of a Dilbert strip. Try and work in "synergistic" and "best practices" next time.
Re:my own? (Score:3, Insightful)
Simple: because it's not just a plain text journal. A weblog system gives you multiple views of your entries - last N, last N in a category, everything in a certain month, RSS/ATOM views, etc. A weblog lets you post when you only have web access and not FTP, which might be the case when you're tr
Re:my own? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:my own? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:my own? (Score:2)
Re:my own? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, I did. A si [4k1r4.ath.cx]mple gallery script I took from somewhere on the net and modified it to fit my needs. There is a cron job launching a perl script that downloads mails from a mailbox and puts the attachments on the gallery and the body of the mail under the image on the web page.
Very simple, but allows me to blog from my mobile phone.
Re:my own? (Score:2)
Phone updates...*shakes head*, why didn't I think of that.
Re:my own? (Score:2)
Seriously, I was considering to put together a system like this (mobile image blogging) but it allways annoyed me that sending data from a standard phone (over the telephone operators networks) is such a big bother. Furthermore I hear that many operators will perform multiple convertions of images in order to compensate for their broken software systems. (For MMS and similar services that is.)
I had even considered doing a Java program in order to transfer the data from the
Re:my own? (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, twenty years ago, in C [sf.net]. Some of the original [conferencing.co.uk] sites [mix.ne.jp] have updated the software a bit, but the "classic" software is still in use. [nlzero.com] (I have done some work [webcosy.com] on modernizing the technology, but that got put on the back burner -- I may start it up again.)
(Some might argue that CoSy wasn't really blogging software. Well, aside from the obvious agreement that the web didn't exist then, so by definition it couldn't have been, there were several Big Names who used Byte Magazine's site (BIX) as just such -- Jerry Pournelle, for example.)
Let the predictable comments begin (Score:5, Funny)
"Hey don't be so stuck up. I blog for fun. If you don't want to read it, don't. Besides, lots of people like reading about me massaging my mom's feet."
Site Mirror (Score:2, Informative)
Mirror [t28.net].
Persionally, I like Serendipity - the BSD License is about as permissive as you can get.
phpBB Blog and phpBB Fetch All (Score:4, Informative)
If you run a phpBB forum, you can grab my add-on phpBB Blog [outshine.com] to turn a forum into a blog. Also, I have a beta [outshine.com] available of the next release. I'd love input.
Also, since this is the Open Source world where cooperation is welcomed, I thought I'd mention that phpBB Fetch All [sourceforge.net] is a blog system that I didn't know about when I made phpBB Blog. phpBB Fetch All is superior to my system, although it is also bigger and more complicated. But it sure looks good.
Where's e107? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Where's e107? (Score:3, Informative)
It doesnt validate, and it's not just comments that fail validation (which I could half understand) but the actual page structure in places.
Chart of features only (Score:4, Insightful)
As I've said before, if accumulation of features were all that mattered, we'd all love Microsoft Office [microsoft.com].
LiveJournal (Score:5, Informative)
Re:LiveJournal (Score:2, Informative)
Everything else is taken care of by the LJ servers.
And the interface is so much easier to use.
Re:LiveJournal (Score:3, Informative)
Re:LiveJournal (Score:4, Interesting)
Use the LiveJournal servers, but syndicate the RSS feed into your own blog.
This way, you can get the best of both worlds, allowing you to intergrate the blog into your own site while using all of LJ's kickass features such as the huge array of WYSIWIG clients availible. It cannot be beaten.
Re:LiveJournal (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:LiveJournal (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not as bad as you suggest (Score:2, Informative)
There are a few missing S2 layouts and some of the more obscure community features (LiveJournal Singles, for example) aren't included. All the webloggy-stuff is in there.
It won't run under mod_perl 2.0 right now because they changed some of the interfaces, but that will probably be addressed at some
WordPress.org (Score:2, Informative)
I didn't like any of them... (Score:2, Informative)
Good timing (Score:4, Informative)
Again, I documented the (rather brief) decision making process here [unto.net].
Any CMS's oriented towards file exchange? (Score:2)
Are there any like this? I'm thinking basic (.htpasswd) type authentication and a simple file layout.
Have you tried? (Score:3, Funny)
Try:
"d00d, l337 WaR3z" + download
ah yes, learn from the masters at exchanging large files
Re:Have you tried? (Score:2)
Thusfar we've gotten by kind of merging FTP and Apache with directory listings enabled, with custom host names for each "server". It's stone-axe simple to set up, but lacks reasonable authentication and that "branding" experienc
Re:Have you tried? (Score:2)
I think you are looking for ssh server and SFTP. It uses one TCP port (22) and goes right through NAT walls. Filezilla [sourceforge.net] is a good windows "interface" for sftp. If your running Linux or OSX, it's already installed. Just set
Why just blog? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe is not yet perfect, but i like TikiWiki [tikiwiki.org] because it have all in one single package (enabling some sort of integration between features, unified security, etc).
Re:Why just blog? (Score:2, Interesting)
The biggest thing I found lacking in UseMod was the ability to have a little "front page" blurb about recent changes, so I hacked one up. This allows the front page to contain links to my journal entries and keep visitors up to speed on the important stuff that's new since last visit. I have some
CMS Specifically for Writers? (Score:3, Interesting)
Specifically what I am in the process of coding (poorly) is a system that will allow me to manage and elegantly present information about the various writing I've done. This information would be metadata such as Date Written, Themes, Similar Pieces, Inspiration, etc...
What I have now on my personal site is pretty rudimentary. (example [fallinggrace.com])
I just have the texts themselves as individual HTML files in a separate directory, while the metadata is in a MySQL database that is queried through PHP.
Thoughts, links, direction, or experiences to share?
- Neil Wehneman
Drupal (Score:2)
Take a look at Drupal [drupal.org].
It has two features that could be helpful to you:
It is a very capable CMS system, and I highly recommend it.
Re:Drupal (Score:2)
- it's customizable and extensible in a big way
- the community around it is very active
- seems to be designed by people who know how to write software (which sadly is not true when you look at the PHPNuke family)
- very feature-rich
It just rocks. I took some time trying out various solutions, and once i've found Drupal there was no looking back.
I'm still very surprised the article mentioned in the newspiece ignores Drupal.
The best one I had (Score:2, Interesting)
Two PHP scripts, plus an additional,
slashdot's journal (Score:3, Informative)
Re:slashdot's journal (Score:2, Informative)
what, no mention about Drupal? (Score:2)
Re:what, no mention about Drupal? (Score:3, Informative)
It is a full fledged CMS application. It is also an extensible framework for web applications as well (someone wrote an e-commerce package for it).
Labelling it as a weblog system is too restrictive, though it handles that part pretty well too.
Re:what, no mention about Drupal? (Score:2)
It's just me that i'm using it strictly as a blogger: i disabled all non-blog-relevant modules in the admin interface and that was it.
But yes, it's a capable CMS framework.
Re:Drupal (Score:2)
Movable Type has a fair license... (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as the individual blogger is concerned, the lesson is this: use a tool that will allow you to migrate your data. Tools will continue to advance, and you can always redesign, but your archives the only irreplaceable part of the whole equation. In the case of Movable Type, you are already ahead of the game because every other blogging tool in existence imports MT data.
Why you migrate is a non-issue. You could just as easily be forced to abandon a GPLed package because it is no longer being upgraded and you need the latest features. Even if you write your own CMS, you still run the risk of not having time to add the features you need! Paying a license fee is just one of many considerations you need to make when picking a CMS.
about to switch (Score:2, Insightful)
ive been looking around for a while now and it seems that wordpress is the most complete package with a good community behind it. the community behind it is important because if you ever run into any kinds of problems, the more people supporting it the better. i guess it is just as important as it is to have a goo
GPL misconception (Score:3, Insightful)
You have the misconception.. (Score:2)
As soon as I download a GPL'd release, I can fork from that day on, regardless of any changes you choose to make.
MT pre-3 didn't allow you the same rights the GPL does, so no, its not the same either.
Re:GPL misconception (Score:4, Informative)
Why WordPress Is Poised To Take Over (Score:5, Insightful)
I've had a site running on MT for the past two years, with nearly a year's worth of Blogger entries before that. About 4,000 individual entries and over 6,000 comments dating back over three years. One would think that migrating a site of that size would be a royal pain in the ass.
WordPress imported the whole thing in a matter of minutes. It's easier to upgrade from MT2.6 to WordPress than it is from MT 2.6 to MT 3.0.
WordPress is fortunate to have hit its stride just as the MT licensing brewhaha was hitting. WP 1.2 has all the features of MT, runs faster, and is completely open source and GPL licensed. It's a bit of a paradigm shift from MT - you have to get used to a dynamically-run system rather than static templates, but once you grasp the power it brings it offers a lot of new potential for blog development. Plus, there are a lot of talented hackers who have been turned off by MT licensing and will be developing WP plugins instead. WP even has features that MT doesn't - for instance automated link management. That alone makes it worth the upgrade.
Plus, future versions will support multiple blogs under one interface, some more commenting controls, and other features. I'd expect as WordPress captures marketshare the development of new core features and plugins will increase as well.
That's a big selling point - even if the WP developers wanted to pull the rug out under free users like Six Apart did, they couldn't. WordPress is GPL software, meaning freedom is but a fork away. Mark Pilgrim's piece does an excellent job of detailing why that freedom is so important. It's another reminder of why open source software is better than proprietary software in terms of flexibility and licensing.
Re:Why WordPress Is Poised To Take Over (Score:2)
It can be found here:
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/05/14/freed
Re:Why WordPress Is Poised To Take Over (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't really want to run MySQL. I don't really want to maintain it. It is just not something I want to deal with. MT lets me use a little local database.
I really really don't want dynamic pages. I just don't need it. I have had zdnet link to my blog which caused a trillion avantgo clients to hit it. I just don't need queries to MySQL and PHP being run all the time. Actually PHP by itself wouldn't be so bad if it cached everything in a local file the first time the page required it as long as it supported if-modified-since and ranges correctly.
I actually kind of like the idea of TypeKey. Of course nothing prevents you from implementing TypeKey support in WordPress.
I simply don't care about silly licensing issues. I mean, for a single non-commercial blog, nothing has changed.
I have an upgrade path. Sooner or later WordPress will probably integrate a local databse and real caching. When that happens if it is better than MT, I'll migrate. I just don't see the point in migrating right now.
Need a row for packages available (Score:2)
Scoop? Slashcode? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Scoop? Slashcode? (Score:4, Informative)
They're not considered because for personal blogs they are probably more trouble than they're worth. I manage The Oceana Network [oceana.org], a group blog on global efforts to defend the oceans, for my employer, Oceana [oceana.org]. (Disclaimer: the opinions expressed here are mine alone and not those of Oceana, yadda yadda.) The Network is based on Scoop [kuro5hin.org].
For a blog like ours, that handles posts from a large group of authors and that needs to be able to support very long discussions, Scoop is fantastic. Give it an inexpensive Linux/BSD box all to itself and it is a very, very nice and flexible online community platform.
However, if you fit the profile of the typical single-author blog author, installing Scoop probably isn't for you. It's a tricky process, requiring "now edit your httpd.conf"-type steps that are just not realistic to expect from someone on a virtual hosting setup. (Not to say that it can't be done -- just that it's not realistic to expect many people to do it.)
And Scoop's primary benefit -- its very nice moderated comment system -- is wasted on a personal blog, where no post will ever get more than a few comments. (I know that ours doesn't have that many yet either, but we've only been up and running for a couple of weeks... give us time :-) )
For those users, MT, WordPress, etc. are much better solutions -- easier installs, and just enough features to be useful without overcomplicating things.
If your blogging ambitions are grander than a simple personal site, though, Scoop is great -- definitely check it out if you haven't already.
Re:Scoop? Slashcode? (Score:2)
Pivot (Score:4, Informative)
Cheers, Paul
Slash (Score:2)
Is Slash CMS or blogging software?
Perfect Timing (Score:5, Informative)
Wouldn't you know it? I just spent much of the weekend converting my site from my own homegrown weblog codebase to pMachine. Here's the new version [pl.atyp.us] (with an entry about the change), and the old version [pl.atyp.us] for comparison. According to the table, b2evolution and WordPress would be equally good fits, perhaps even slightly better because they support assigning an entry to multiple categories like my old code but unlike pMachine Free, but when I tried them all out at opensourceCMS [opensourcecms.com] that really wasn't the case. I strongly recommend that you check out candidates there, because a lot of the small things make a difference. Here are some examples:
These sorts of things, none of which are covered in a mere checklist, really matter when you actually take the plunge. Trying stuff out on opensourcecms is a great first step, but then you should actually download the real thing and really try to run a test version of your own site on it for at least an hour or so, to see if you can truly tweak it to your liking. Only then will you be able to make a decision that will really satisfy you.
Re:Perfect Timing (Score:2, Informative)
Also note that a new version of WordPress was just released over the weekend [wordpress.org]. This version is much nicer than the old version, which is probably what was previewable on opensourcecms.
Check it out.
Keep it simple and stupid (Score:3, Informative)
It has almost no feature listed in this article. People can just write text, and add an optional picture to every text. The comment system is also extremely basic, with even no threading support.
So why is it so popular, moreover there are plenty of featureful competitors?
Probably because it's minimal, so it's trivial to understand. Weblogs are for people who don't want to learn anything, just publish.
And even Blogger is way too complicated for the average user IMHO.
Also, with a weblog, you just write the text and some script will automagically create the code. So why not make the weblogs produce correct, accessible documents ?
The usual complain of web site designers when you talk them about accessibility is "oh, well... too complicated to implement, I prefer Dreamweaver-made HTML".
With a weblog engine, once templates are properly designed, making the documents accessibles to blind users could be trivial. This is, IMHO, the main point of weblogs, CMS, etc.
But out of every weblog software compared in this document, I can see only once that produces accessible, XHTML-conformant pages : bBlog.
Why? Useless features are fun, but it would be nice to also focus on what a weblog could really bring over traditional sites.
stay away from PHPnuke (Score:4, Informative)
LiveJournal break down (Score:2)
Current Version: 1.1?
Home URL: http://livejournal.org/
Trial URL: http://www.livejournal.com/
License: GPL
Cost(US$): Free
Minimum Server Requestments: Perl 5.6.1, MySQL 3.23.57, Apache 1.3.28, mod_perl 1.28 [livejournal.com]
Localization: Almost all, I think!
Multilingual: Yes
Data Storage: Database
Max Weblogs: Unlimited
Multiple Sites: Yes
Post Ordering: Descending, Ascending
categories: Yes (
jspWiki? (Score:2)
I used jsp wiki and was considering an upgrade to a get 'cheap' blog up but have no idea if it's any good or not.
http://www.jspwiki.org
http://www.jspwiki.org/Wiki.jsp?page=FAQWeblog
I have no affiliation... just wondering.
how about a blog software that doesn't require sql (Score:2, Interesting)
Any suggestions for this case? And please don't say "change hosting providers" because I'm doing this for a University program and it needs to be hosted in University webspace. Hence no SQL server.
Re:how about a blog software that doesn't require (Score:2, Informative)
I've been looking for a piece of blogging software that doesn't require a SQL server. I've been using MovableType, storing its data in a BerkleyDB file. However, I'd like to move away from MovableType (for licensing issues, as well as usability issues)
Bloxsom [blosxom.com] and Blojsom [sourceforge.net] both use the filesystem to store blog entries, and require no database.
Another blogging system overlooked. (Score:2)
Hmm...
snipsnap (Score:3, Informative)
Other Free/Open Java blogging software and sites (Score:3, Informative)
While you're plugging Java based blogging software, don't forget the Roller Weblogger [rollerweblogger.org], which runs JRoller [jroller.com] and, since the article includes blosxom [blosxom.com], people should also be aware of blojsom [blojsom.com], which is a Java based clone of blosxom. Naturally, there are others out there too.
P.S. Since the original post didn't provide a direct link, here's one for the home page of SnipSnap [snipsnap.org].
Client Side Weblog Editor (Score:2, Interesting)
Interesting (Score:2)
Another one not mentioned (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Best Webloging system is slashdotted here. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wordpress (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Wordpress (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:Wordpress (Score:2)
Re:What about Forum software? (Score:2)
Re:What about Forum software? (Score:2)
phpBB [phpbb.com]
I've used it many of times to host forums, here are a couple examples:
Knight Time Media Forum [knighttimemedia.com]
The Everdead Message Board [nocensmundus.net]
Re:What about Forum software? (Score:2)
Re:The best blogging "system?" Please. (Score:3)
3 lines of CGI isn't going to handle multiple weblogs, multiple authors with accounts & permissions, user accounts, pinging & trackbacks, RSS/Atom feeds, etc.
Re:The best blogging "system?" Please. (Score:3, Informative)
1. Select text
2. Click blogging bookmarklet.
3. Add any comments
4. Click the post button
I can't do that with notepad. Of course, I can do it with free software.
Other things that take more work with notepad.
1. Cycling stuff off my front page.
2. Creating archive pages.
3. Creating navigation by topic
4. Keeping a consistent template for all my blog pages
5. Syndicating blog conten
Re:The best blogging "system?" Please. (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you nuts?
You try manually managing 4,000 entries without going completely bonkers - including permalinks, comments, and extended entries. The whole point of blog software is that you have a system that manages permalinks, organizes information, allows for open exchange, etc. Those are all things that require some kind of infrastructure. Blogging software is really just a specialized form of CMS, and anyone who argues that sites consisting of thousands of pages doesn't need some form of content management and control is quite frankly a complete and utter lunatic.
Or to take your logic, who needs a computer? What is a computer? A device that just does mathematical calculations. If you can't figure out insanely complex matrix operations and vector math, then your're probably not very smart anyway. All those super-elite people can use a slide rule to handle all the intense computation for them. If you pay for computers, you're a sucker...
Re:Write your own (Score:3, Insightful)
The DIY approach is always worth considering from a self-teaching standpoint.
Once you've understood all of the problems that the rest of the community has solved, though, pitch your idea and get behind something popular.
The only people benefitting from the Open Source fragmentation are the proprietary vendors. While a small number of choices may make sense, keep in mind the ancient architect who noted that houses divided against themselves don't stan
Re:Diveintomark.org (Score:2)
Google cache of Freedom-0 [66.102.9.104], and his follow-up Aftermath [66.102.9.104].
Mark Pilgrim put his money where his mouth is and donated $535 to Wordpress - an open source blogging tool. The amount was the same as the fee Movable Type were charging for their scripts according to their usage scales.