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Communications The Internet

Best Weblogs for Personal Websites? 66

Posted by Cliff from the creating-your-online-diary dept.
herrvinny asks: "What is the best weblog script to use on a personal web site? SourceForge and Google show plenty of weblogging systems available, but I just need a simple, powerful solution. Movable Type has been recommended to me, but I've heard of problems with spam, exploits, and comment flooding. I'd like to have a decently good comments section, where visitors can reply to my ramblings and have a fairly large toolset in which to do so, i.e. smilies, some limited HTML (bold, italic, etc). A small Polling plugin would be terrific as well. Which weblogging systems do Slashdot readers use and recommend? Some complexity isn't a problem; I can work in Perl, HTML, C (among other languages) if I need to. Also, what do people think of adapting Slashcode for such purposes?"
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Best Weblogs for Personal Websites? More

Best Weblogs for Personal Websites?

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  • MT (Score:4, Informative)

    by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) * on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @06:47PM (#8923119)
    There are plugins for MT to prevent comment spam & to provide other features, though I don't know of a polling plugin. (registered users & polling are my most-wanted features. MT 3 will have registered users, but I haven't heard if it'll have polling.)

  • GeekLog (Score:4, Informative)

    by Vokbain ( 657712 ) * on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @06:48PM (#8923122) Homepage
    I used to use GeekLog [geeklog.net] for my personal site, and it worked pretty good. I've since moved to a combination of phpBB [phpbb.com], and an addon for it called phpBB_Fetch_All [sourceforge.net].

    The advantage of using phpBB is you can easily expand your site into a larger community or something in the future.
    • I second that, geeklog [geeklog.net] is pretty far ahead of the pack last I checked. I had set up a site for launch (socalsnowboarding.com [socalsnowboarding.com] shameless plug) with it and it was awesome. Easy polling system, with polling administrators (and any other type of administrators you can imagine or create), so certain people could make polls (or not make them) news stuff, RSS feeds, all kinds of plugins. I am in no way affiliated with geeklog, but I definitely support their product. The only downfall it had when I used it was a
      • GL [geeklog.net] is by far the best. I did an extensive search before I settled on GL. It has great plugins that allow you keep spammers out, great RSS integration, polls, stats, upload area, static pages, images, etc etc. And themes to boot. Check out my site for an example. site [dmacias.org].

    • i also tried Geeklog and it was quite functional and loaded with features.
      however, what i am really looking for is something more simple and with better date navigation.

      i decided to roll my own. it's not complicated and it doesn't allow comments (yet), but i am able to add entries and add photos to entries.
      navigating the entry archives is a snap also.

      you can check it out here [ventura.nu]

  • There can be only one ... (Score:4, Informative)

    by lfm_the_couch ( 663351 ) <lfm@the[ ]uch.org ['-co' in gap]> on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @06:49PM (#8923127) Homepage
    Textpattern [textpattern.com], by Dean Allen, is the One True Right and Only Blogware. You can even get in on the development process, since it's in gamma (a damned functional gamma) right now.

  • Blosxom (Score:4, Informative)

    by Apreche ( 239272 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @06:49PM (#8923131) Homepage Journal
    My friend uses it.

    http://www.blosxom.com/ [blosxom.com]
    • This is a great place to start, it is actively developed, has a great commuinty, and a constantly growing plugin selection.

  • pMachine... (Score:2, Informative)

    by emd ( 25227 )
    ...is a great simple and free blogging tool. Requires PHP, MySQL and Apache. Supported on Windows, Mac and un*x. Great community support and many hacks and plugins.

    Give it a try [pmachine.com]
    • I'll second the pMachine recommendation. It's latest incarnation called ExpressionEngine adds on to the pMachine feature list and provides caching of dynamic pages and other enhancements that make it very scalable for large communities or news sites in addition to the simple blogging aspect of what you are looking for.

  • Movable Type 3 is coming (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mr. Darl McBride ( 704524 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @06:50PM (#8923146)
    MT3 is coming out, and it's really harshing our fun. It supports a central login server with Turing test at sign up (type the twisty word you see here), which makes crap flooding less productive. If someone floods, all current and future posts from that account can be invalidated at once.

    The current Movable Type also supports plugins for local Turing tests. 99% of users don't install them because they don't know to look for them, just as over half the MT sites still have the Melody (default user) account still active or the install directory still executable because they don't read the damned instructions.

    • Re:Movable Type 3 is coming (Score:4, Informative)

      by Mr. Darl McBride ( 704524 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @07:03PM (#8923267)
      If curious, most Movable Type sites (i.e. foo.com/bar) have the MT program at foo.com/bar/mt/mt.cgi -- if they've neglected to lock it down, then Melody is the default user and Nelson is the default password.

      If you see a site like this, please let the person running it know before a spammer finds it, because you can use the interface panel to upload files, even cgi. :/

      You can find fresh MT sites by searching Google for "powered by movable type" including the quotes, then skipping some random number of thousand hits forward.

  • Wordpress (Score:4, Informative)

    by artios ( 524941 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @06:56PM (#8923205)
    Wordpress is a really nice option. http://wordpress.org. It does have a nice interface and a very active community. In addition they have some solutions to the problems of comment spamming.

    The other nice thing is that they output compliant code.

  • What about just for posting a simple news list (Score:3, Interesting)

    by skermit ( 451840 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @06:56PM (#8923206) Homepage
    I want an updates list kinda like the one I had before here: http://www.christopherwu.net/news.php [christopherwu.net], and I used a now defunct program called newsPHP or nPHP for short. It was easy, allowed me to add a couple entries, and stored all the data in a text datafile which was separated using metatags which a PHP script chopped up and displayed. It was quick, easy, and required no mysql, or any sort of programming experience. Anybody got a suggestion for a barebones update/news itemizer? Please Thanks!

  • How About Integrating It Into a BB? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TheWanderingHermit ( 513872 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @07:00PM (#8923240)
    I currently have phpBB running on a site. Has anyone ever tried integrating their blogging into something like this? I'd think it could be done easily by creating a special topic where only the administrator can post, then another topic for replies.

    Has anyone done this? Is there any problem with it that experienced users can warn about?

  • MovableType (Score:3, Informative)

    by Angel 666 2003 ( 695217 ) <angel666@myrealbox.com> on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @07:02PM (#8923254)
    I use movabletype, and it has been a great blogging tool for me. Everything is controlled through templates, so it makes very easy to edit the look and content of your webpages.

    In regards to comment spam, i have had some problems with it, but a great plugin that i found called mt-bayesian [mt-plugins.org] , which uses a bayesian algorithm to catch spam. on my blog it has worked very well, effectively stopping all the spam that i get and not limiting my users who post to me.

    I have not seen any polling plugin, but i do not think it would be to hard to make one (or to find one) The other blogging system that i tried was b2evolution, an open-source php blog. my experience was that it was a lot more work than MT (not just moving files) and that it was oriented much more towards communities - it expected to deal with groups of blogs and interactions between them, unlike MT where each blog is unique. So i would recommend MovableType, but i haven't really tried all the availible options, so i don't know how much my 2c counts.

  • If you don't need comment support... (Score:3, Informative)

    by SpaFF ( 18764 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @07:04PM (#8923278) Homepage
    Are you really looking at setting up a community with a user database and a full-fledged comment system, or do you just want a personal website? If you just need something to make posting to your personal site easy and searchable, you should try Personal Weblog. The homepage is at http://www.kyne.com.au/~mark/software/weblog.php [kyne.com.au]
    It supports RSS feeds, CSS, Mysql, and Postgresql. It is the easiesy way to put blog support into an already designed webpage IMHO.

  • I use Greymatter... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Abraxis ( 180472 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @07:11PM (#8923327)

    May or may not be the best solution for your situation, but I use Greymatter [noahgrey.com] for the news updates on my personal site [mattjay.net].

    From their website:

    Greymatter is the original opensource weblogging and journal software. With fully-integrated comments, searching, file uploading and image handling, completely customisable output through dozens of templates and variables, multiple author support, and many other features--while having perhaps the simplest installation process and easiest-to-use interface of any program offering this level of functionality--Greymatter permanently raised the bar for weblogging and journaling, and it remains the program of choice for tens of thousands of people around the world.

    Good luck!
    • I've also used Greymatter with good results. As far as I can tell it's the best (as in only) solution if you want commenting but don't have access to (or don't want to use) a database like MySQL.
      • As far as I can tell it's the best (as in only) solution if you want commenting but don't have access to (or don't want to use) a database like MySQL.

        Movable Type can be installed to use the Berkeley DB for an easy no-database-admin option. (MySQL is recommended.)

  • Depends on what you want to muck around in... (Score:5, Informative)

    by gregwbrooks ( 512319 ) * <gregb AT west-third DOT net> on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @07:21PM (#8923421)
    I currently host MT [movabletype.org] and Mambo [mamboserver.com], and have also hosted other weblogs and nuke-type systems. Each has its pros and cons.

    If you're comfy with Perl and want to hack extensively, MT is the natural choice. You can make it do damned near anything you want without hacking, of course (via plugins), but sometimes it's fun to mess around under the hood. Oh, and you can avoid the comment-spam problems you mentioned via a number of plugins.

    If you prefer PHP, I'd say try Mambo (with a nice polling function built in) or Wordpress (which gets props because it produces valid XHTML/CSS and is clean, clean, clean on the admin interface.

    Best advice: go to Open Source CMS [opensourcecms.com] and play around. They have default installs of a lot of CMS/blogging systems, and even let you play with the admin interfaces. Very helpful, all in all.

    Mandatory plug for my MT-based weblog, here [greg-brooks.com].

    • Best advice: go to Open Source CMS and play around. They have default installs of a lot of CMS/blogging systems, and even let you play with the admin interfaces. Very helpful, all in all.

      As long as people know that the site limits the choices only to PHP-based blogs. You'd be missing out on a lot of others unless you also check out cmsinfo.org [cmsinfo.org], a better site IMHO.

      Since the OP would be interested in perl solutions, perhaps he'd be interested in WebGUI [plainblack.net]. It's an open-source perl-based CMS that can be easily

  • Try TikiWiki (Score:3, Informative)

    by zanel ( 571806 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @07:26PM (#8923463) Homepage
    Although it's very Wiki oriented, it also has a fairly robust CMS system and blogging features....extremely flexible. I use it on dailyread.com and have had very few difficulties with it. Standard Apache/PHP/MySQL setup. TikiWiki.org [tikiwiki.org]

  • I use Blogger (Score:2, Informative)

    by timlee ( 303958 )
    I've been using Blogger [blogger.com] for many years. It's very simple to use but the one thing it lacks is comments. People usually use third party scripts to do commenting but it's really not that hard to write your own if you know a little PHP.
  • It's really not that tough. You set up a comments database, an articles database, and a users database. Make a user registration page, an article posting page, an article+comment+post-comments page. Set a cookie with a randomized string that's updated in the database whenever a user logs in, and checked when someone tries to access a protected function. Each comment database entry will include the index of the article it was posted from; to build the article view page you just fetch the article, then selec
    • Web programming is one of my larger hobbies. I've never used a premade script. I've coded everything I've ever done from scratch. It may not be as quick a solution as using a premade, but ACTUALLY CODING sure is a great way to make you a good programmer. :p

      I always shudder whenever I see someone who claims to be a programmer running a website on Movable Type or something. Okay, maybe they're not a WEB programmer. But still! :)
  • Seriously, I use notepad to maintain my photoblog, and upload with FTP. I don't find it difficult at all. As long as you use SSI and CSS you can isolate your editing to a very small part. I find it easier and simpler to handle than any other blogging system.
  • I use a small CMS called poseiden. http://wonko.com/poseidon/

    It does exactly what I need it to, which is maintain an archive and let me people post comments. GPL too.

    No longer maintained, but wonko is like that.

  • PostNuke (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Zugok ( 17194 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @08:48PM (#8924112)
    I have been looking for something similar similar to Slashdot or Scoop

    I don't see how usimg Slash or Scoop would be a problem, but my experiences in installing them can test your patience. Last time I managed to get Slash going was about 5 years ago, and just recently tried Scoop on WinXP without success. Your milage may vary, but since you can do PERL, HTML and C, you will find it a lot easier. I on the otherhand, am not a code money in anyway at all (well a little fortran anyway).

    The closest I have come to finding something reasonably mature, easy to install, is PostNuke. They say it is secure. It is php based, but works similar to Slashdot. Here's an example [postnuke.com]. PostNuke itself has no smiles (I can;t stand them myself), but it has a module called PNphpBB which makes it act like phpBB2. PostNuke's own forum [postnuke.com] uses this module, which I find odd, but if it meets their needs, who am I to complain :)
    • I seem to recall a few security bugs in PostNuke, though I'm sure it's a big step from PHP Nuke. I also recall that the main developers left the project.

      Anyway, as for security, a lot of these PHP systems have issues. PHP itself isn't the most secure, but it's not really at fault, I don't think. I think, to be honest, that a lot of these systems are written by guys who aren't coders, and it shows in the code (the one's I've looked at, at least). I messed with Drupal, incidentally, for some contract-work;

  • I tried this - did not work. Don't dream about it without root access to the server. Better yet, have the server in your bedroom so you can work on it around the clock for a few weeks. I gave up and went with PHP-nuke, despite the inferior moderation system.

  • Write your own (Score:2, Insightful)

    by PD ( 9577 ) *
    I wrote all the code that I used to generate pdrap.org [pdrap.org] in Python, and learned a lot from that.

  • If you're just looking to keep friends up-to-date with your life, why not just use plain ol' HTML? Easy to write; the

    and tags should be enough to do most of your formatting, and the server load your page generates will be orders of magnitude below what large perl based systems would create. As my math teacher always said, KISS.

    • f you're just looking to keep friends up-to-date with your life, why not just use plain ol' HTML? Easy to write; the [p] and [hr] and tags should be enough to do most of your formatting, and the server load your page generates will be orders of magnitude below what large perl based systems would create. As my math teacher always said, KISS.

  • e107 (Score:2)

    by mrgrey ( 319015 )
    e107 [e107.org]

    Not as well known as some others but a great choice. Sounds like what you are looking for.

  • A friend of mine, Victor Bogado [slashdot.org], just wrote his own blog engine, check it out! [bogado.net].

    Here is his blog [bogado.net] (in Brazilian Portuguese), as an example.
  • A project that I've been actively developing for quite some time is scheduled to be released this week ironically. Framewerk Weblog is designed to be an easy to use, secure, extendable, and is an entry level offering which will be paired with Framewerk CMS and Framewerk Community. More information can be found at http://blog.framewerk.org [framewerk.org] and http://www.framewerk.org [framewerk.org].
  • Myself I use blogspot. Its a pretty good service that lets you pick from a template for the design and gives you the option to design your own template. The only real complaint I have about it is that they don't have image hosting. The publishing process is pretty simple and is optimized for people who have zero html experience.
  • You are not the first person I have seen asking about 'adapting slashcode' or 'using slash's comments engine' or something like that.

    Just FYI, slashcode is damn near impossible to adapt to anything except a site that does exactly what is done here at slashdot. It's not extensible, and it's not flexible. That's not to say it is bad or is bad code. It's just special purpose. Scoop is the same way. Other site engines that did not grow out of a specific site are generally more adaptable.
    • Atleast you didn't post anonymously making those claims.

      Now back them up, because I'm pretty sure I can show you're wrong on just about everything you've stated in your post.

      So let's see references to backup your claims please & thankyou.

      • Re:Slashcode (Score:2, Informative)

        by maol ( 177620 )
        You should know better... have a look at the YASS section of slashcode.com [slashcode.com] (Yet Another Slash Site) and try to find a unique looking site... quite difficult (but not impossible, I agree).
        I really like the work this guy [gugod.org] (just click through the core styles to select the different CSS stylesheets) has done for Slash in CSS/XHTML [slashcode.com].
        PS: I'm running the German Slash Site Symlink [symlink.ch].
        • The slashcss/xhtml is coming. Most of the templates have been converted, and there's work on the code to clean/fix comments/story data to clean up the html so that sites will validate.

          Once this is done, it'll be quite easy to re-work a site just by modding it's style sheet.

          There's even been talk about doing a slashzen site with it once all the work's done. I'd expect if that happens, you'll see a number of new looks pretty quick :)

      • Well, I downloaded and installed slash sometime just after the 2.0 release to try out a few ideas I had. While the install was actually suprisingly straightforward (at least to someone familiar with mod_perl and someone who is a fairly decent perl hacker), the amount of work that would be required to extend the code was very high. HTML is output willy-nilly from all over the place. Changing the look of one page might involve editing not only a template or two (fine) but also several source files.

        The more c
        • Changing the look of one page might involve editing not only a template or two (fine) but also several source files.

          This has improved, a lot, over the years. There's really not much html left in the src. Nearly all of it's in the templates (especially the data templates)

          What the developers need to do, imho, is do the secion code re-work, and then release the thing.

          That would help people:
          a) develop addons
          b) not have to diff their changes all the time to keep up with the every-changing cvs version.

          You'r
  • Have a look at Serendipity [s9y.org], a PHP+MySQL based blogging engine. Lean, clean and very useable. Extensible with a plugin architecture.
  • Boastology [boastology.com] works good for me. It's got comments, voting, a nice pretty calender, and other stuff.
  • What I'm looking for is something similar, but which is run on a local machine and ftp's a static layout to the server.

    Basically I want a script to take a big textfile and break it up and spread it over multiple pages along with some spiffy formatting.

    Even better, a gnome applet that I can drag url's and text onto. Then it pops up a dialog to allow further editing.
  • Movable Type's comment-spam problems stem mostly from its popularity; it has a large enough installed base to make it worth it for spammers to build tools to bulk-submit garbage comments. That installed base has also made it worthwhile to develop plug-ins to protect against that. I've had a little bit of trouble with spam on my blog [godsexboyfriend.com], but it's been easy enough to deal with.
  • iBlog is awesome, if you have a mac. Read all about it. [lifli.com] They charge in Rupees, which is kind of neat.
  • And no, I don't mean "just use their site"

    It's Open Source - download it and give it a go.

    That way you can host the journals of your 3000 friends too :->
  • great for blogs, great for news, great for articles... Give it a try!

    Nucleus [nucleuscms.org]
  • Isn't this Slashdot? Make your own! Then you can brag about it, in the weblog!

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