What’s the best open source blog software?
by Sapphire (April 24, 2008)
My recent attempt to write Wordpress plugins failed, but it gave me my first semi-clear view of Wordpress under the hood. I saw big chunks of coding to replace features that didn’t need replacing. The whole system struck me as bloated and patched together.
I will stick with it until the time comes to invest in a pricey blogging system. But now I wonder how someone like me, without PHP expertise or much knowledge of servers and hosting, can guess which system is best.
I started this site on Serendipity, which is mind-bogglingly awesome in terms of features but had a limited community of plugin developers. I also tried Drupal, which is overwhelming for novices who just want to set up a damn blog and start blogging. I never figured out theming on either, which was one of the reasons I switched to Wordpress. But are they lightweight? Are they secure? I had no idea.
I played with TextPattern and B2Evolution. Again, I couldn’t figure out theming or find plugins for everything. And I had no idea if they were worth learning because, once again, I had no idea if they were lightweight and secure.
Wordpress is not necessarily secure out of the box because some hosts don’t configure permissions the way Wordpress developers apparently assume everyone does. You may not be able to upload without changing folders to 777, and novice users don’t always realize that’s a problem (either ftp your uploads, or find a new host). And Wordpress sure isn’t lightweight when you get Dugg. Until then, it’s a fast-loading, impressive platform - assuming you haven’t innocently installed plugins which dump mountains of garbage into your database, or made any one of 100 newbie mistakes I’ve made that slow it down. But once the traffic comes, the php calls multiply insanely and your blog can’t load. There are workarounds - caching plugins will almost certainly take care of this. And you can recode some of your php calls to be html (like your categories).
Wordpress is extremely full-featured, in the sense that you can practically order a plugin in the forum and find one or get one made in less than a day. Awesome! But that plugin could cause security issues, could kill your server with php calls, etc. You still have to know what you’re doing, or Wordpress can kill you. Fortunately, the community’s so big you can always get help when things go wrong.
That said, what do you use and why? Can you tell us non-programmers something about how to find the right blogging platform for our sites?
Posted in Blogging
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April 24th, 2008 at 9:21 am
I have gone through the EXACT same thing - I’m not at that point yet where I want (or can afford) to pay for a blogging platform - and then with all the blogs I have do I have to pay for each one separately? You know those questions!
I’ve tried my hand at figuring out the ones we find on your server site - and either I’ve found them lacking in plugins/community or they’re hard to figure out (being someone who doesn’t do a lot of coding it can get really confusing) and then they have different terms to explain - “modules” as to “plugins” as to… something else. It’s hard to wrap my head around them.
Also the theming - tricky stuff… unless I’ve got a lot of time to sit down and figure it out - but as of yet I’m still lacking on the free time thing. So I’ve gone with WordPress. I’ve not really dug around the code, but I’m sure there’s bloat to it. But straight out of the box - it was awesome, I had my first site up in 10 minutes. How nice is that.. and adding stuff to the site was pretty easy. I’ve stuck with them, because of the active community/themes out the wazoo.
So until I see something just as good - more secure perhaps… I’ll be sticking with WordPress. I too would love to hear alternatives.
April 24th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
As far as I know, Textpattern is more lightweight and secure than any other blogging platform or CMS. I’m not too technical, I just know html and css, but I can use it no problem. There are not so many themes available as Wordpress but just check out Textgarden or Textpattern Resources (where you can find plugins as well) and you’ll probably find one you like.
Installation is quick and simple, so is updating about once a year. The forum will give you all the help you need. Plugins are simply copy and paste and activate and there are plenty. I’d recommend after installation installing this templates plugin to make it easy to install templates. (After installing read the Help). Then from the same site you could try this beautiful template to get you started and blogging.
Some people say Textpattern is a learning curve and I wrote a tutorial of first steps which gives a learn by doing set of tasks so as to get to the point where it clicks into place. It’s designed to be read before you start to write articles or mess about.
I never get any comment spam by the way, none at all, although I can tell from my logs that there are lots of attempts. They all fail
April 24th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Regarding hosting, here is a list of web hosts that are compatible with Textpattern.
April 24th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
I suggest you checkout textpattern a little closer. There is no real themeing you can write true html! Plugins are super easy to install and you’ll find the the forum and documentation are both awesome.
April 25th, 2008 at 8:50 am
I love hearing what other people think of Textpattern. I’ve been playing with some other CMS systems thinking that Wordpress won’t quite do what I want it to. Joomla isn’t bad–but does way more than I need it too and while I can see how powerful and easy to use it is on a BIG site–I don’t have anything that needs those features.
Also, theming is harder on it–even just messing with an existing theme was harder than wordpress.
I’ll have to go back and look at Textpattern again though. It sounds hopeful. I love the thought of just updating every year instead of regularly! :).
April 26th, 2008 at 6:53 am
I would say that b2evolution v2.4 has a very slick theming system. When you open a theme file, every little bit is commented and you see exactly how it’s working. If you edit in Dreamweaver for example, all the comments stand out in a different color. It really made my life easier.