21 April 2006
Choosing Blog Software
It took me a while to figure out what blog software to use to create this blog, and I thought someone might benefit from the research I did, so this entry describes the process. First, I made a list of features that I thought would be useful to have:
- Categories for posts, and either sorting or searching
- Ability to let visitors add moderated comments (not just spam filtering — I wanted the ability to review comments before they were posted to the site)
- Host the blog on my own site, on Linux/Apache, using PHP or Perl and MySQL (not flat files)
- Low cost, no ads, commercial use OK
- RSS
- Ability to create multiple, separate blogs, preferably without installing multiple times
- Easy to start using
- Unrestricted formatting options or templates
- Mature product with user base and documentation
- Open source and plug-in architecture are a bonus
- Support for other languages would be nice
(To make a long story short, WordPress has all of these features, with the exception that I believe to have separate blogs, you need to install the PHP and other files in different locations on your site. Oh well.)
The next step was to find what was out there and compare features. So, I posted a notice on a local mailing list I contribute to, to get some advice and starting points. Here are the comments and feature-comparison sites I used:
- Blog software comparison chart
- Another blog software comparison chart
- Ratings of open-source blogging and content management software, with some demos
- Eileen from list recommends: LiveJournal (allows customization), drupal (good for a programmer)
- Ann says: MovableType, LiveJournal, and Blogger have multiple license options; TypePad keeps you from having to deal with administration issues, but documentation is weak
- Sanjeev, Joan, and Deborah recommend Wordpress, as an easy-to-use open-source solution with lots of plug-ins
- Dee uses and likes Typepad; thinks WordPress is not as intuitive
Now, something to work with! I went through the comparison charts, visited web sites, tried some of the blog software options out on demo sites, installed a couple on my own site, and eventually settled on WordPress. Here is a list of the other blog software options I considered, and the reasons I did not choose them. If you want to check them out for yourself, I suggest Google for finding them. I don’t want to put in links, since I didn’t like them. :)
- b2Evolution — no keywords, no comment moderation
- bBlog — small feature list
- BLOG:CMS — based on Nucleus, advertized comment moderation does not work
- Blogger — not self-hosted, no categories, no RSS
- Blogware — service sold through resellers, not sure about features
- Blojsom — requires Tomcat server; flat files; no comment moderation
- Blosxom — flat files
- Blur6ex — still in early stages of dev
- BoastMachine — no comment moderation
- Dotclear — Mostly French documentation, no comment moderation
- drupal — no comment moderation
- Expression Engine — not free, no keywords, no comment moderation
- FireBlog — obsolete, replaced by Snowflake
- LifeType — comment moderation supposedly via plugin but no plugins available
- LiveJournal — not self-hosted
- LoudBlog — mostly for media blogging and podcasting, not text blogs
- MovableType — not free, flat files, no comment moderation
- Nucleus — no comment moderation
- Pivot — flat files, no keywords, no comment moderation
- Pixelpost — mainly for photos, not text blogs
- sBlog — still in primary development stages, no comment moderation
- Serendipity — no keywords, no comment moderation
- Simplog — no documentation on website
- Snowflake — early stage development
- SPIP — good features, still a possibility, doc mostly French
- .Text — requires hosting using Windows/SQL server, no comment moderation
- TextPattern — no comment moderation
- TruBlog — no comment moderation
- TypePad — not self-hosted, no search, no comment moderation
- Wheatblog — still in early stages of development, no comment moderation
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