Kudos to Serendipity one more time

by Sapphire (June 23, 2006)

Once again, I have no regrets about using Serendipity for my blogging system on this site instead of WordPress. I’ve experimented with a few blogging platforms, and WordPress is generally my system of choice because there are so many plugins and options, and such a huge community of developers.

But Serendipity is a completely different experience. Not so much an alternative to WordPress as an entirely different approach to blogging. It’s set up so that even the most uncertain, novice blogger can have tons of plugins and customizations running in no time - one button automatically installs the plugin. It has features WordPress still doesn’t have - like the ability to back up your HTML as well as your database, and to schedule these things to happen at whatever intervals you like. And when you want to change what’s in the sidebar, you don’t have to edit code - you just rearrange, add and delete plugins in a control panel. And with 268 entries and probably about 250 comments, it’s still loading fast and all that jazz.

Now, let’s talk about Serendipity’s limitations. Number one: theming. Some people are great at creating new themes for Serendipity, and there are plenty to choose from. But I find it easier with WordPress. If your php knowledge is limited to cutting and pasting code, like mine, you’ll find this easier to do in WordPress. Serendipity’s templating structure doesn’t really allow you to just pop in php code - you have to know how to call it or wrap it, or whatever that stuff is. On the other hand, changing templates is so easy: you just click to the new template, and your sidebar items are already intact. Want one sidebar or two? You just make that choice. While some Serendipity templates don’t look good with two, any of them will work with one or two. This flexibility is something WordPress doesn’t offer.

It also offers a user forum that’s a one-button install. I haven’t played with that, but at one time, I would really have loved it for one of my other sites. In fact, I may have to play around with it a bit just to see.

The Serendipity development team is working on a new templating system, which may very well solve both problems and still retain that astounding one-button flexibility. In the meantime, tweaking your template into a state of prettiness is not that difficult (don’t look at mine and barf; that’s an issue of my design skills, LOL). And if you desperately need some php or something else funky - why, this leads me to the best part.

One of the main reasons I have to recommend Serendipity as a great WordPress alternative: the most responsive freakin’ developers I’ve ever encountered. Yesterday, I needed to put some PHP code into my template so I could run Sell Ad Space” >. Couldn’t do it. I went to Serendipity’s forum and told them what I needed. Gavin asked me for more details. By this morning, the new plugin was ready. I had some confusion when I installed it, which he cleared up for me, and now it’s working. That’s well under a 24 hour turnover. You can’t always get that on products you pay for.

So now this blog is, once again, doing everything I could ask of it. Doing everything WordPress can. Well done, guys.