Looking for Blogging system

[rabbit_fufu]

Hi All,

I'd like to set up a blogger on a site and am wondering what the consensus is as to what some of the better blogging softwares out there are? If anyone has some experience in this and would like to offer their opinion it would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

[Shak]

i keep hearing moveable type mentioned all over the place

shak

[zulufox]

moveable type is the best...

it is the alpha and the omega

[bufferzone]

I to will recommend Movable Type, but I wouldn’t necessarily call it the best Blogging system, I would call it the blogging system best suited for Search Engines. If you ar looking for a bloggint system just to blog and you don’t care about placement and seo, you can find systems that are more configurable and with more functionality, but for SE’s Movable Type rules the day

[encyclo]

I believe the biggest problem with MT is its ubiquity. Automated tools exist for searching out MT blogs and spamming the comments fields, along with other such annoyances.

The only blog software I've used (though not as a blog) is Wordpress: [wordpress.org...] - it's good stuff and you should try it along with MT.

I believe some upstart called Google owns a blog system called "Blogger", too...

[ebizcamp]

Movable Type does not support user registration. Generally, Movable Typle's user management is weak. Anway, it is a blog system so it is understandable.

[TGecho]

The one I use and like is Nucleus. It's pretty flexible, and can be made reasonable search engine friendly. I'm not too familiar with MT, but it's definitely the most popular.

[paybacksa]

In my experience MT is not good for stats... although I have only used it hosted so maybe that's the issue.

Keep in mind that MT is also windows only (last I looked) which is a big important consideration.

LiveJournal is an open source blog that is very popular.

[ebizcamp]

MT is windows only? It is a Perl program.

[sidyadav]

>MT is windows only? It is a Perl program.

So? Perl works with Linux aswell.

Sid

[mivox]

Automated tools exist for searching out MT blogs and spamming the comments fields

But there are also add-ons that filter new comment submissions via frequntly updated spam lists. MTBlacklist is the one I use. If you get the regular blacklist updates, it almost completely eliminates the problem.

Windows only

Not true. Moveable type is a perl script hosted on your web server, with 100% web-based administration tools built-in. I have my installation hosted on a *nix Apache system, and have managed it with my Macintosh computers since 2001. OSX even has desktop software available that will post to a MT weblog without having to log-in through your browser.

I don't think I've used a Windows machine to do anything with my MT blog, ever. Not once in the last 4 years.

And it seems to get along fine with SE ranking/spidering/Google, etc. My blog is a PR5, and more than once I've ended up ranking higher than the official sites for things I wrote about, once Google spidered the new entry on my index page.

[HughMungus]

Blogger. Toolbar. EOT.

[sidyadav]

I built my own blogging system, but I would reccomend:

Blogger - Simple Interface, Easy to install/use and sort of - not really, customizable.

MoveableType - Not that easy to install, but easy to use, hell customizable and popular.

Those 2 are probably the only best things I can think of right now.

Sid

[paybacksa]

Sorry... I was thinking of Manila when I said I thought it was Windows only.

One thing I suggest is make sure you set DNS to a domain name before you start blogging, and don't use the default blah.blogsystem.com URL. If not, all your traffic belongs to the blog system.

[ergophobe]

I don't have anything to recommend.

I have not tried MT or Blogger.

* Nucleus. If I remember... The original verison I started with allowed HTML in posts, but didn't easily allow you to have a clickable image and required PHP register_globals to be on (which is bad). The updated version solved the register_globals version and has an add-on or something for clickable images, but doesn't allow HTML in posts and broke everything I had. I went back to the old version. My rating: thumbs down.

* Wordpress. Installed it and got huge number of errors and warnings. Try this app with the php error setting set to ~E_ALL. There is literally no checking for whether variables or array indexes are valid/set. Personal rating: thumbs down.

[mivox]

MoveableType - Not that easy to install, but easy to use, hell customizable and popular.

Very true... it is a pain to install. But last I heard, you could pay the parent company to install it really cheap, and then you can customize the templates through the online admin area... and once your templates are set to your liking, running it is only a matter of filling out online forms.

[TGecho]

>> The updated version [of nucleus] ... doesn't allow HTML in posts and broke everything I had.

Doesn't sound at all familier. Which version was that?

[sidyadav]

> If not, all your traffic belongs to the blog system.

Yeah, Blogger allows you to put a version of it on your website.

Sid

[ergophobe]

>> The updated version [of nucleus] ... doesn't allow HTML in posts and broke everything I had.

Doesn't sound at all familier. Which version was that?

I don't recall. All I remember is that I moved to a server with register_globals off and the site broke. So I cross-graded (my term for newer but not necessarily better software) to a new version and any post that had HTML in it (rather than the template codes that nucleus uses) was broken. I cross-graded back to the earlier version and turned register_globals on for the nucleus site.

Tom

[cyberair]

Anyone had any experience with drupal.org?

[isitreal]

* Wordpress. Installed it and got huge number of errors and warnings. Try this app with the php error setting set to ~E_ALL. There is literally no checking for whether variables or array indexes are valid/set. Personal rating: thumbs down.

I just tested wordpress too, super easy installation, good interfaces, but when I checked the code, global variables all over the place, plus the above, I was really surprised, don't they teach kids anything in CS? Product works though, but if you turn off 'register globals' you'll be in big trouble from what I saw.

[ebizcamp]

The biggest problem of MT, in my point of view, is its user management.Currently, MT's user(author) management is a bit weak. No user registration, no pending mechanism, etc

[tolachi]

Anyone had any experience with drupal.org?

You're starting to get into a full fledged CMS sytem there. If you are interested in going that route you may want to check out Open Source CMS [opensourcecms.com]. There are some others, like XOOPS, Mambo, and Xaraya, worth considering if you want to go the CMS route.

[vkaryl]

I've seen a fairly nifty one on several sites: typepad. I won't post the url, but it should be fairly intuitive to arrive at....

[Edit - should point out that this is actually another offering from Six Apart, Ben and Mena Trott, who of course ARE MT. Though typepad seems to be fairly beyond MT in some ways.... it's hosted though, and not inexpensive.]

[chrisnrae]

I begged a friend to install MT for me (was above my skills LOL) and have been pleased with it thus far. I mentioned in another related post on here though that I keep up with several blogs that are pretty well read and there seems to be a certain tide moving right now with a lot of them switching over to Expression Engine. I don't know anything backend wise about EE, but frontend wise - very customizable and some pretty neat features.

[bill]

That tide of movement away from MT was due to some new licencing they introduced about a month ago. Just the other day they re-did the entire licencing structure and once again all seems right with the world...EE took advantage of the MT debacle and offered their premier system for free.