Slashdot Mirror

PostNuke .8 http://www.postnuke.com/ is actually just about everything you say that you long for and then some. I will tell everyone to take a new look at it as the codebase has been completely rewritten and the template engine Xanthia is Smarty based and works great.

I've killed some time on this since it's a pretty interesting idea. It turns out there are plenty outside the D and F range. It does seem to like pages with a single Flash object and not much else, so that's bad. It also makes some pretty arbitrary decisions which don't mean squat to many sites. There are some sites that get enough traffic that speed is a factor but not so much that a content delivery network is really necessary, for example.

I skipped the actual link and score on sites that are pretty much just representative of the sites around them. I wanted to include them by name, though, to show where they fall. I've stuck mostly to main index pages, and I've noted where I've gone deeper.

A: Google (99%), Altavista main page (98%), Altavista Babelfish (90%) (including upon doing a translation from English to French), Craigslist (96%), Pricewatch (93%), Slackware Linux, OpenBSD, Led Zeppelin site at Atlantic (100%), supremecommander.com, w3m web browser site (96%)

B: Apache.org (87%), the lighttpd web server (84%), Google Maps, which also got a C once (84% in most cases), Perlmonks (84%), Dragonfly BSD (85%), Butthole Surfers band page (81%), 37 Signals

C: One Laptop Per Child,, ESR's homepage, the Open Source Initiative (78%), Google News (73%), Lucid CMS (74%), Perl.org (75%), lucasfilm.com, Charred Dirt game

D: gnu.org, The Register, A9 (66%), kernel.org, Akamai (64%), kuro5hin.org, freshmeat.net, linuxcd.org, Movable Type (61%), Postnuke, blogster.com, Joel on Software (67%), Fog Creek Software, metallica.com, gaspowered.com, Scorched 3D (68%), id software (64%), ISBN.nu book search

F: MS IIS (49%), microsoft.com, msn.com, linux.com, fsf.org, discovery.com, newegg.com, rackspace.com, the Simtel archive (26%), CNet Download (29%), Adobe (58%), savvis.com, mtv.com, sun.com, pclinuxos.com, freebsd.org, phpnuke.org, use.perl.org, ruby-lang.org, python.org, java.com, Rolling Stones band page (56%), powellsbooks.com, amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, getfirefox.com

My site for my company (96%) gets an A (no, I'm not going to get it slashdotted) which is pretty simple but has a pic and some Javascript on it. Several sites I have done or have helped design with someone else get C or D ratings.

1) Real multilingual Support for all modules/themes/blocks - at least the core system must provide that out of the box

While most CMS system work well in monolingual environments, the real challenge is the multilingual use. That starts with correct browser language detection, goes further with solving the character set complications for output & input, continues with taking care for multilingual people, and finally ends at providing a choice of language in case of not translated parts. Most CMS I came around are sumb English centered and don't care for more.

2) A serious and configurable caching system that enables the webmaster to react to traffic and load related problems

Most CMS are designed with small low traffic sites in mind. That's ok, but some of the fortunately grow. Unfortunately you're mostly alone then. Reacting to a Slashdot (well, that's how I learned to tweak sites for traffic peaks), or a download rush, or accidentially all search engines crawl your site the same time - all that happens and needs solutions.

3) Security features that integrate with corporate policies

That's where almost all of them fail - but actually it'S not that complicated to use LDAP, SSH, SSL for log-in processes.

4) A theming engine that encourages designers' creativity

While all CMS provide a browser bases interface to edit themes (do you know a good designer who really works that way?), most of them fail when it comes to providing API and documentation a designer person would understand.

I definitely forgot to mention other important features - those are just the first coming in my mind. While working with several different CMS systems every day, I feel most comfortable with the mix of features PostNuke http://postnuke.com/ provides. It is far from perfect, but at least provides a good portion of the features I mentioned above.

Ah, did I mention interoperability/compatibility between CMS systems? ;-)

Greetings, Chris

To be honest its the first one that has really impressed me. I looked at slashcode, scoop, zope, plone, postnuke, mambo.

When I started using drupal I got the same feeling as when I started using Mac OS X. To continue the OS analogy postnuke and phpnuke are more like windows whereas zope and plone are kinda linux of the CMS world.

PostNuke is a piece of software (sort of a content management thing, I believe). It's not a hosting service (posting anon to preserve moderations I've already done in this thread).

Every time someone asks about the camparative benefits of CMS packages, it seems like someone has to mention each package out there at least once. So here goes...

I use PostNuke and I found it easy to set up and use. I have programming experience, but was pretty unfamilliar with PHP/mySQL and HTML when I started using this package. I don't run a newspaper site, but this package would easily do the trick. Also, PHP/mySQL are part of most hosting packages out there, so your serve probably already supports it.

It's too bad the site hosting the package sucks so bad...

Please DO NOT confuse PHP-Nuke (in my opinion badly coded and yes, vunerable to scripts kiddies) with this article about PostNuke . They are very different CMS's.

good god, it took forever to find what they're about. Who invented their navigation scheme, Rube Goldberg? Their about page is http://docs.postnuke.com/index.php?module=Static_D ocs&func=view&f=/aboutpn/whatispn.htm

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 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 uses this module, which I find odd, but if it meets their needs, who am I to complain :)

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 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 uses this module, which I find odd, but if it meets their needs, who am I to complain :)

We have just migrated West Ham Fans into a content management system. PostNuke is the sofware behind the site.

Our "sister" company offers web hosting accounts that enable the automatic installation and configuration straight from the web browser. Therefore to get the website you see online took approximately 5 hours.

As for the content, PostNuke has a very nice user interface, allowing you to administer/add story/manage users/etc. with great ease.

After some initial struggle of getting traffic to your site (SE marketing is vital) and links from related websites, I think things will start getting better and better.

Slashdot has stories on the frontpage submitted from users. They are the ones that will make the content as the site progresses.

Of course, a reliable web hosting provider is a good place to start. Personally, being part of a 3-people web hosting/web design company I suggest that having a reliable hosting solution can avoid problems on the long run.

We have just migrated West Ham Fans into a content management system. PostNuke is the sofware behind the site.

Our "sister" company offers web hosting accounts that enable the automatic installation and configuration straight from the web browser. Therefore to get the website you see online took approximately 5 hours.

As for the content, PostNuke has a very nice user interface, allowing you to administer/add story/manage users/etc. with great ease.

After some initial struggle of getting traffic to your site (SE marketing is vital) and links from related websites, I think things will start getting better and better.

Slashdot has stories on the frontpage submitted from users. They are the ones that will make the content as the site progresses.

Of course, a reliable web hosting provider is a good place to start. Personally, being part of a 3-people web hosting/web design company I suggest that having a reliable hosting solution can avoid problems on the long run.

In theory, I strongly agree with what you're saying. In practice, however, having set up my own Zope/CMF/Plone side on Debian unstable (yes, unstable) and Apache, I'm gonna have to disagree.

It took me a while to set up Zope/Plone. There's a nasty bug in Debian's distribution of Plone, but thankfully there's a super easy workaround in the BTS. It also took a couple visits to #plone@irc.gnu.org to set up an actual Plone instance, but in retrospect it wasn't that hard. I got the Apache passthrough working too. Now, Plone's setup phase is done. Anything I need to change is done via GUI, and the Structured Text system is perfect for marking up content without obfuscating it. Oh yeah, and the Structured Text was the only thing I actually had to look at the Plone docs for. It's probably even easier when you use them start to finish.

I've used e107, PostNuke, XOOPS, Slash, Scoop and probably a few others. They're all neat, but I've had way more problems with them all, from just plain failure to strange errors to lack of features. e107 does have a TON more themes available, though.

You say Zope is going in the wrong direction, but I fail to see how. With Zope, you can build webapps into your Plone site - just don't ask me how. With most PHP-based CMS's you still have to install an SQL server of some flavor, and I doubt if you can build webapps in. You complain about Zope/CMF/Plone being three-tiered, but really CMF is just an addon to Zope - it doesn't add complication. And I think it's pretty sweet to be able to manage all your Zope stuff through one interface - including all your Plone sites and whatever else you've got going. You also complain that Zope is a "closed world" because of the object database. Yeah, it's about as "closed" as any other website that has an FTP backend - i.e. NOT.

And as far as speed, I haven't noticed a bit of difference between Plone and e107 (the only other CMS I've ended up using for real). I'm not pretending I get any real traffic, though. But to balance that, I've got a horrible setup - at the moment a P4-1.4 with 256/RAM and a cable modem with an upload cap of 256Kb.

In short, Plone rules. Not sure how it does it, but it does.

Using printf or echo adds overhead and slows the page down. Check out this comment:

In short, when writing themes, HTML should be written as HTML and PHP should be written as PHP. One of the great strengths of PHP is that it allows the coder to break out of PHP and code HTML on a dime with no performance setback by simply specifying closing and opening PHP tags where you want to start PHP code again. In fact, it is faster for your server to process a PHP/HTML mix this way.

Instead of coding HTML where it should be, most theme creators resort to using 'echo' statements to tell PHP to output everything in quotes, and worse yet, include the output in double-quotes, necessitating "escaped" double quotes for any quotes used in the HTML code.

This is not necessary and is in fact, a sloppy way to define a theme whose output is *mostly* HTML. If you look at the modified Extralite theme example at the bottom of this post, you will not see one 'echo' statement in the code. Whenever I need to start coding HTML for the theme, I simply pop-out of PHP with a closing '?>' tag; when I need to insert some PHP code (even if it's in the middle of an HTML block), I go back to PHP with an opening php tag.

Source: http://forums.postnuke.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2 &file=viewtopic&t=18177

--
For great deals on elctronics and computer equipment, check out Retail Retreat

According to the page source it is PostNuke.

Here's the official PostNuke What is PostNuke? page.

Yes! PostNuke is currently in version .726, but version .8 may be released as soon as early December. Recently, a project summary was posted on the pnNEWS site.

Yes! PostNuke is currently in version .726, but version .8 may be released as soon as early December. Recently, a project summary was posted on the pnNEWS site.

I am running a site on Postnuke now. Check out Retail Retreat. (Right now my theme kinda sucks, but I will have a new one up shortly). It's not very hard to setup and you can really configure things through the GUI. I have messed with PHPNuke as well, and it seems to have a lot more user community written modules and blocks. Postnuke has many useful ones, but not as many. One good thing with Postnuke is that they have a very good support through thier forums. I asked a question there yesterday and got a response literally in minutes.

One nice thing about Postnuke is that you can make many configurations online. A lot of PHPnuke files require a .cfg file that you have to manually edit and re-upload to the host provider.

I haven't used the gallery modules on my production sites, but I have used them on a test server. The menalto gallery module works will under both CMSs.

Another plus of the Postnuke CMS is that the main forums module is modified from phbb2 and called PNphpBB. It allows seamless integration with Postnuke and will even take on the theme colors.

With the Pagesetter & Photoshare modules is pretty simple, if you set it up for them and remove all the extraneous stuff.

Then they can just login and start making galleries and logs, pretty much just using a form and the nice little pagesetter online x-platorm wysiwyg.

http://www.Postnuke.com

Pagesetter & Photoshare: http://www.elfisk.dk

There is a BookCooperative PostNuke module that does just this. See it in action at the UH IEEE web site (http://www.ieee.uh.edu).

There's a module available for postnuke that allows for easy book exchanges. For the life of me, I can't find a link to it, but I've used it on my site (which I won't post here because I don't want it turning into a pile of smoking rubble).

it should absolutely refuse to run if magic_quotes_gpc is OFF

I hope php-nuke does not rely upon register_globals

Since PHP-Nuke is popular and GPL, there are a few PHP-Nuke derivatives that have been locked down pretty well. Start by looking at Nuke Fixes, Nuke Resources and Nuke Forums. The derivatives worth a look that I know of are:

• MyPHPNuke
• Postnuke
• Nuke Cops PHP-Nuke Enhanced Bundle

Postnuke! With all the built-in modules and extensibility via other modules, and whatever PHP coding you could/would contribute you'd have a heavy-duty classroom portal-- with a module for the phpBB2 forum system described above available too. May be a bit overkill, but it'd almost certainly have everything ya'd need...I use it for five or six Intranet sites- very useful for the lazy... ;-)

PostNuke security alert due to SQL Injection

The /. cabal only regards two languages as relevant C and Perl, they deny or try to bury other interesting and/or useful languages, like PHP, Java, Ruby, or Smalltalk. I wonder if a properly tuned php/apache combo could keep up with /code's perl/mod_perl/apache cluster setup. Admitedly /code has served them mostly well for 250,000 users with some hiccups here and there, but there are plenty of other CMS+Blog engines out there written in php or perl. Scoop, php-Nuke, and postNuke are some of the big ones.

Anyone use any?

In My Experience, I've been finding free software alot like commercial software: alot of it is drek, some of it is ok, and a few apps are excellent (Postnuke, for instance, works very well for a web portal), as does MySQL for a database. O and Apache, is it working ok for you too?

The decision to use is about the same, gently pry the slick brochures from the boss's hands, research reviews, comments on industry forums, opinions of friends, colleagues, etc., and if all checks out install and test. Obviously you probably don't want free software where there are few posts/changes/sourceforge updates in the last year, similarly with commercial software, except with most free stuff it's much easier to tell how many developers are currently working on the project.

Since I very rarely have found even very expensive software that had company support worth a dang, I've gotten used to getting support off of web forums and google searchs, so supporting free OSS software is about the same as supporting most commercial software.

One big difference of course is price, but another huge difference is that when there is a problem/missing feature in OSS, I can write it in or have it written in, and/or if it is a big problem in an OSS with a large user base, I have found that it gets fixed very quickly, esp. where the core code programmers are using their own product.

Depending on the specifications you will gain quite a bit by using systems that are already out there.

E.g. you can use the an open source content mgt system for the basic site and write a plug in for the specific needs. Try e.g. Postnuke

It's not all roses and no thorns you know... Even with a 100% GPL/Open Source product, conflicts can exist between developers/community members that can code. Most of the time, this will result in forks of a project (eg. PHP-Nuke and PostNuke).

Now imagine a situation when one of the developers for a dual-license software who contributes actively to the product refuses to allow commercial use for his contribution. This can cause havoc to the dev process because the status of the commercial aspect of the software is now questionable.

If the particular procedure/call/parsing/whatever is rewritable by the other developers then the problem would be minimal. But what if that particular lines of code is an essential part of the end product itself, and that it is just (near) impossible to write a more efficient replacement code?

You will hear cries of "Fork! Fork! Fork!" in the background baying for blood (or code in this sense). Consider that...

ISSHO Kikaku currently uses the JoinProject module for PostNuke as a way to allow people to match their skills with the volunteer tasks that are in demand within the organization. It works well (need to register first), but it is very simple and is not adequate for more sophisticated needs. Why not look for something more sophisticated? We are, but don't forget that to give people all over the globe the potential for equitable access, everything must be translated - at least for some organizations.

So, mechanisms that match tasks and talent certainly need to be improved. But perhaps the bigger issue is tools for facilitating collaboration. These need to be reasonably priced, sophisticated and easy-to-use. And multilingual, of course.

In the specific case of ISSHO, an implementation of Wiki is very exciting so far, but - at the moment - lacks somewhat in the i18n area and in the linkage between the collaboration area and the website proper (this particular problem is related to the multiple flavors of RSS, ability or lack thereof of converting between encodings on the fly, and other issues). Sounds like it would be simple enough to solve, but so far these little nagging problems limit what organizations can do, considerably.

Once these and similar issues are addressed (and systems are in place to ensure that they will continue to be addressed, even as technology progresses) it will become much, much easier for volunteer organizations to get properly organized, and to organize potential volunteers. "Virtual Volunteering" will see a new dimension if and when these groups are able to focus more easily on the results, and don't have to do quite so many handstands to come up with adequate mechanisms for handling the basics.

I guess I need to clarify what I ment by "successful". I don't think that any slashdot reader is going to disagree with you that those projects are important have been met with great success within the open source community. But if you look at the OSS projects that have really garnered widespread recognition, development, and support, the list is relatively short. I mean, the only open source project that you ever really read about outside slashdot is Linux, maybe Perl, and maybe Apache.

You can do a search on freshmeat and find an open source application for just about anything. The problem is that 99% of those projects have either A) Never gotton past Alpha before the (sole) developer bugged out and moved on or B) Users started arguing or complaining about meaningless things, leading to dozens of "splinter" applications with a fraction of the attention they should be getting. The result is that most fall away into outdated nothingness. Postnuke is one such project that seems like its heading down this path. We've all been there -- you download a cool looking OS app, but when you try to compile it you discover that it never really made it past Alpha, it has all kinds of outdated library depedencies, and there is absolutely no development support on it any more. What good does it do?

I was simply trying to debunk the arguement that a company is better off using OSS simply becuase they can use the code if the project goes away. My point was that Open Source projects seem to go away more often than commercial projects, and a company is no better off because the source is available. They still need to pay somebody to update and support the program. I guess because I didn't praise linux in my post it got modded down as "flaimbait". Oh well.

PHP-Nuke? No thanks... PostNuke [postnuke.com] (a PHP-Nuke fork) is far superior - instead of one developer, it's an OSS project... lots of features and less bugs than the original

PHP-Nuke? No thanks... PostNuke (a PHP-Nuke fork) is far superior - instead of one developer, it's an OSS project... lots of features and less bugs than the original.

Interested, working with PN for big project, but we are currently deciding whether to code a few features that it sounds like MT already has.

PostNuke CMS

Editing HTML from the command line in a shell is much more time-efficient, IMHO.
I might remind you that you are posting on a blog now? A weblog makes for a MUCH easier site setup and maintinance experience. Check out Postnuke for an example of a very easy to setup blog.

Some useful modules include:
CalZone (calendar)
Gallery (photo gallery)
EZ CMS (content management)
PhpWiki

Use the EZ CMS for publishing and use the Wiki for collaboration.

On the other hand, I am starting to favor Python over PHP for various reasons. As a result I've been looking at Zope and wondering if I can get more of what I want. Here's what I have found so far:

PostNuke seems much easier to understand and to get up and running right away. The website is easier to understand and the documentation is geared to making it work rather than the design and theory behind the project. Zope, however does look quite interesting for it's object model and number of products available. It appears as if it would take much longer to get a complex site built but once one has experience with Zope it seems it would be trivial to extend the available products. Also the Zope team had put serious emphesis on the Content Management Framework (CMF). If you're looking for just content management and workflow, this deserves a serious look.

Finally, is it just me or is the zope.org site really hard to understand? There are few examples, virtually no screenshots and links to everything but real answers. Every Zope site seems the same too. There's always a sidebar with a useless, simple calendar and a link back to every other zope site, but little real answers. I must be missing something. Maybe once I wrap my head around everything Zope I'll make a site devoted to showcasing what Zope and Zope products can do with real screenshots, real demos and real example code.

Some useful modules include:
CalZone (calendar)
Gallery (photo gallery)
EZ CMS (content management)
PhpWiki

Use the EZ CMS for publishing and use the Wiki for collaboration.

On the other hand, I am starting to favor Python over PHP for various reasons. As a result I've been looking at Zope and wondering if I can get more of what I want. Here's what I have found so far:

PostNuke seems much easier to understand and to get up and running right away. The website is easier to understand and the documentation is geared to making it work rather than the design and theory behind the project. Zope, however does look quite interesting for it's object model and number of products available. It appears as if it would take much longer to get a complex site built but once one has experience with Zope it seems it would be trivial to extend the available products. Also the Zope team had put serious emphesis on the Content Management Framework (CMF). If you're looking for just content management and workflow, this deserves a serious look.

Finally, is it just me or is the zope.org site really hard to understand? There are few examples, virtually no screenshots and links to everything but real answers. Every Zope site seems the same too. There's always a sidebar with a useless, simple calendar and a link back to every other zope site, but little real answers. I must be missing something. Maybe once I wrap my head around everything Zope I'll make a site devoted to showcasing what Zope and Zope products can do with real screenshots, real demos and real example code.

Some useful modules include:
CalZone (calendar)
Gallery (photo gallery)
EZ CMS (content management)
PhpWiki

Use the EZ CMS for publishing and use the Wiki for collaboration.

On the other hand, I am starting to favor Python over PHP for various reasons. As a result I've been looking at Zope and wondering if I can get more of what I want. Here's what I have found so far:

PostNuke seems much easier to understand and to get up and running right away. The website is easier to understand and the documentation is geared to making it work rather than the design and theory behind the project. Zope, however does look quite interesting for it's object model and number of products available. It appears as if it would take much longer to get a complex site built but once one has experience with Zope it seems it would be trivial to extend the available products. Also the Zope team had put serious emphesis on the Content Management Framework (CMF). If you're looking for just content management and workflow, this deserves a serious look.

Finally, is it just me or is the zope.org site really hard to understand? There are few examples, virtually no screenshots and links to everything but real answers. Every Zope site seems the same too. There's always a sidebar with a useless, simple calendar and a link back to every other zope site, but little real answers. I must be missing something. Maybe once I wrap my head around everything Zope I'll make a site devoted to showcasing what Zope and Zope products can do with real screenshots, real demos and real example code.

As a sysadmin, is there any information anywhere on what sort of machine/connection can handle a slashdot load?

Well, I had the Slashdot Effect hit me. My problem was not machine speed (well, yeah, it was), but more the bandwidth. I had a 4 meg GIF file on a webserver over a T-1 connection to AT&T. This file sat on a Pentium II with 96 MB RAM. This machine also runs many other functions, including Spam Assassin and mail for about 2,000 users. Also, my main website runs Post Nuke and so I got bandwidth Slashdotted because I had 30,000 requests for a 4 MB file by noon of day one. That is over 100 gigabytes to transfer, and a single T-1 can only handle 17 gigabytes per day! I replaced the image with a smaller images (5K), but the number of requests made the webserver go haywire. Before it ran a load average of maybe 0.70 fulfilling all its requests, but when I cut to the smaller size GIF and more requests came in, the load average went to more than 100.00!

The end result was three days of monitoring, firewalling, changing GIFs, etc. My main website (running Post Nuke) got more traffic that day than any other in its history. More than 3,000 requests came day one just from the link with my name. I feel that it is still majorly responsible for the traffic I get, and I still get many links to the 4 MB GIF file.

On another note, I had submitted a story once before that did not point to me, but the link from my name generated more than 10,000 hits in that month.

Could my webserver stand up to Slashdot? If I had more memory -- yes! However, the bandwidth was the problem. It is a marriage of the two bottlenecks that allows systems to beat the effect. If I had my site distributed across several Internet connections and many different, powerful systems it would have been no problem -- just a heavy day.

1. Slash: The code behind Slashdot. Uses PERL as its underlying technology and is built on Linux. Requires Apache.
2. Zope: Commercial Open Source software which uses Python as its code base. Good support and training available, but the community appears to be lacking.
3. phpNuke: Underlies a lot of the free weblogs on the net at this time. Built on PHP coding and requires Apache. Some personality issues here, but a strong product.
4. PostNuke: Underlies many sites on the web, including both commercial and amatuer. An off-shoot of phpNuke, so built on PHP coding and requires Apache. VERY good project management and a solid timeline. Some recent deaths at the project have placed the team under stress.
5. phpSlash: A PHP port of the Slash system (one of the older ones, and as such is built on PHP coding. Seems solid, but lacks many of the modern features of slash.

There are many others, including (but not limited to): Nope, Druphal, KorWebLog, etc. This is still a crowded marketplace and people are trying to reinvent the wheel here often. Check out this site and do a search on CMS to get an idea of the diversity.

Best advice from my limited experience so far:

1. Decide which language best fits the way you program (Perl and PHP have roots in C/C++, Python is more like Basic)
2. Decide what features are drop-dead critical for your site (i.e. comment system, moderation system, workflow management, shopping cart)
3. Decide if you want commercial support if something goes wrong
4. Decide how much you want to spend (even if you do not spend on a system, you will wind up with costs for hosting, books, training, etc.)

In the end, I think I have decided on PostNuke. But your choice may be very different.

1. Slash: The code behind Slashdot. Uses PERL as its underlying technology and is built on Linux. Requires Apache.
2. Zope: Commercial Open Source software which uses Python as its code base. Good support and training available, but the community appears to be lacking.
3. phpNuke: Underlies a lot of the free weblogs on the net at this time. Built on PHP coding and requires Apache. Some personality issues here, but a strong product.
4. PostNuke: Underlies many sites on the web, including both commercial and amatuer. An off-shoot of phpNuke, so built on PHP coding and requires Apache. VERY good project management and a solid timeline. Some recent deaths at the project have placed the team under stress.
5. phpSlash: A PHP port of the Slash system (one of the older ones, and as such is built on PHP coding. Seems solid, but lacks many of the modern features of slash.

There are many others, including (but not limited to): Nope, Druphal, KorWebLog, etc. This is still a crowded marketplace and people are trying to reinvent the wheel here often. Check out this site and do a search on CMS to get an idea of the diversity.

Best advice from my limited experience so far:

1. Decide which language best fits the way you program (Perl and PHP have roots in C/C++, Python is more like Basic)
2. Decide what features are drop-dead critical for your site (i.e. comment system, moderation system, workflow management, shopping cart)
3. Decide if you want commercial support if something goes wrong
4. Decide how much you want to spend (even if you do not spend on a system, you will wind up with costs for hosting, books, training, etc.)

In the end, I think I have decided on PostNuke. But your choice may be very different.

Why not support PostNuke, a fork of PHPNuke that has a much better attitude toward open source development and security.

One of Slashdot's downsides compared to blogs is that it's really pretty slow. Usually by the time one of the editors makes the decision to post a story to the front page, the story is several days old.

Google ratings are only a side benefit of blogs. Many actual humans actually read them.

One thing that I wonder about is Slashdot's searchability, how it's rated by Google and other search engines. I've never once been directed to a Slashdot thread as a result of a search which is a pity because there's such excellent information and insight here at times. I wonder if Slashdot have taken steps to improve the searchability/URL indexing of Slashcode-based sites.

BTW, thanks for pointing out Blogdex, looks very interesting; I'm one of those who haven't yet developed the blog habit.

If you're unhappy with Zope/Squishdot you should try Postnuke rather than slash. It's a real CMS, offers theming, internationalization, dozens of external modules for you to expand your site.

While still in its beta-development phase Postnuke is proving to be a secure and interesting open source CMS to keep an eye on.

Not so true. There are PHP libraries out there that exist to serve this purpose. Include the library, tell it which dB you are using and all the rest of the code is the same. Check out ADODB. To see it in action, check out PostNuke. I find it rather nice :-)

In your search for content management systems check out www.postnuke.com. It is a fork of the PHP-Nuke project. It is run much better. It is more secure, as seen in buqtrac, and they have rewritten the entire core. It is truly much nicer then phpnuke. Not to mention the fact that phpnuke is a one man show and postnuke has dozens of developers. With a little enginuity you should be able to get your weblog written as a module but it will require some coding :-) Good Luck!

• is more secure (see bugtraq)
  
• allows posting from the desktop (Blogger API)
  
• has a wiki module
  
• has a clean architecture
  
• has a roadmap
  
• has dozens of able developers (phpnuke is a one man show)
  
• has live support over IRC
  

Speaking about online marketing, one thing that strikes me is how the market for concert tickets is still dominated by Ticketmasters and their huge 20%-ish charges (it is not uncommon to be charged $6 for a $30 ticket).

It seems to me that the cost of setting up an online ticket sales service are negligible compared to that markup. Why aren't venues, even small venues, selling tickets on their own? There are even open source systems available now (I'm thinking about postnuke modules but I'm sure there's something else. I find it amazing that nobody (actually, very few) is trying to cash in to the opportunities, and that the internet revolution has not affected a bit TicketMasters' monopoly.