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i have been wanting to put a blog up for a while and am thinking that i can finally get a new domain name to put a blog on but don tknow which of the scripts are bestets for this any advices for me on a script i think i will probably go with wordpress because it is free but i am not sure with all the updates for it if i am going to be always upgrading
Wordpress is fine, and with the latest version all you do is tell it to upgrade and it does it for you, for both the versions and the plugins. It's like 2 minutes tops.
WordPress is the leading blog script, just make sure you always keep it up to date as security holes are found in it all the time.
Coincidentally, I just happened to try out a new (to me) blogging engine today, Serendipity. I only played around with it about an hour or so but I am truly impressed. I've worked with WordPress and others before (in non-porn uses) and this is by far the easiest and most flexible out-of-the-box blogging system I have seen. Installation took perhaps 2 or 3 minutes, excluding a couple of minutes beforehand to create an empty database and user for Serendipity in phpMyAdmin.
After that it was off to the races, configuring, styling, etc...and it even has drag-and-drop layout for sidebar widgets. So many things are configurable by default, you just need to select from a dropdown list or click Yes or No buttons. Lots of widgets and templates are already included in the installation so no need to search for add-ons that do most of the things that most people want to do. One sidebar widget lets you put code into it, so you can kind of build-your-own, it gives you a dedicated spot in the layout to create what you want there.
From what I read about it on the net, security risks are infinitesimally lower than with WordPress. Upgrades are in-place, no deinstalling plugins and reinstalling them afterwards, one by one. I'm pretty jazzed about it, will continue to play with it and check it out more, but at this point I'm thinking I may dump WordPress in the future. Supposedly it's pretty easy to set it up to manage multiple blogs from the same installation/administration but I haven't gotten that far yet (WordPress MU is infamous for its difficulties and quirks).
Did I mention it's free and open source (with BSD license so it can be used commercially)?
More info at: http://www.s9y.org
Kevin
I use Wordpress on almost all my blogs. It satisfies me absolutely:)
Kevin, please keep us posted on your experience with Serendipity. I'm interested in what you find.
serendipity is the one based on movable type? yes that looked interesting.
The security hassles with wordpress suck. All the security problems I have ever had have been with wordpress.
No, I don't think it's based on Movable Type. From what I've read on their site, it was written from the ground up by a guy who wasn't happy with blogging/CMS software that existed at the time (it's now a collaborative effort of volunteer programmers).Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill
So far, I only ran into two "bugs" but it was because of my setup. I'm trying Serendipity out on my own computer, a local install of Apache/PHP/MySql, rather than a Unix box at a hosting service. So there was a glitch when Serendipity needed to use ImageMagick (graphics program on virtually all Unix servers) to auto-create thumbnails of pics and my Windows didn't have it. The other problem was the MySQL database I created for Serendipity. By default I use InnoDB tables and Serendipity needs MyISAM tables so it can do fulltext searches on the site. Both were easily corrected and shouldn't occur in a hosting service setup.
So far, I'm sill very impressed with Serendipity. It just feels so much easier to work with than WordPress, without getting into the underlying PHP and HTML, which I do know but hate to tinker with because then everytime there's an upgrade my alterations to any code may get wiped out. I'd rather use something that works out of the box except for bits like the widgets in Serendipty and WP which are designed specifically to run PHP/HTML in a sidebar box, to do something for which no pre-made widget exists.
Kevin
How do Serendipity sites look? Do they all have some similar look? Or can a variety of sleek, hot, up to date looking designs be made with it? Just asking ahead to be practical before I try sometime.
Ahhhhhh, yes, melody is the new one based on movable type.
http://openmelody.org/
I think movable type creates fixed html pages, rather then generating pages on the fly like wordpress, so supposedly has certain advantages over wordpress as far as stability and server load goes.
But that's just an imprerssion I've gotten, I'm not sure it's a fact.
I use drupal for various mainstream things - it's been way more stable and trouble-free then wordpress.
Like most blogs, there are predefined templates you can select or you could create your own or modify one of the predefined ones. I've put together a test blog to show you guys some of the stuff Serendipity does.Quote:
Originally Posted by tim460
Please note that I more or less threw everything at it but the kitchen sink, lots of widgets and such that I would probably never use in a production blog. I didn't even use all of the stuff available but it's still overkill and overly busy. I added a bunch of random entries with random thoughts as I was playing with the blog, so I could try out the various types of posts, see how pagination and navigation work, etc. It wasn't created as a Serendipity tutorial so don't judge it too harshly ;)
Also, be aware that much of what you will see can easily be modified with a few clicks. I'm very impressed with the amount of style and content changes that are available from the administratiion pages rather than needing to get into the PHP/HMTL code. If you see something you don't like, it's quite possible you could change it just by a single click of your mouse. For example, don't like tag clouds that use Flash? Fine, just one click to change it to a non-animated list that uses simple CSS/HTML.
Anyway, take a look and have some fun with it. To get more ideas about the templates available, check the Serendipity website and another I found for templates. The links are shown in the Recommended sidebar box.
http://www.vaqriver.com/blog
Kevin
That is very useful and kind of you to make that site for us, Kevin. Like the pics, looks like a good life!
I will do some more checking into it...try it out maybe on a test blog.
Thanks
Oops, I said to take a look and have some fun with it but I forgot to include the important part: I set up an account that anyone here can use with the test blog. Click the Blog Administration area in the sidebar and you can add/edit entries, change some of the configuration, etc. It's a user level below admin just because I figure it's unwise to toss out public info about an account that would have direct access to the database files. I don't care what anyone does, this is just for having fun and trying it out so don't worry about messing things up. The only thing I ask is that if you run into some bugs, write about it here so we'll all get some insights.
User name: gww
Password: vaqueros
Kevin
Again, thanks, Kevin.
thank you all for the great help and advice in this post :)