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If WP says that "Code is poetry" and TXP that "Code is pottery"... for Drupal what is Code like? ;)

It sounds like I could get Sharepoint by installing MoinMoin, Word Press, and integrating the two with something like OpenID for single sign-on.

How is this some spectacular whizzy thing that nobody else is doing? Could you please enlighten us all as to what makes it so fantastically juicy to the CIO set?

On Wordpress you have the option of requiring moderation only the first time an individual posts. Once you have approved one post by them they no longer are moderated.

Sure it still involves trolling though moderated spam to find the genuine posts, but if you don't have massive traffic it works fine.

If you do buy cheap hosting, wordpress has really good podcast support. We use the PHP script dirCaster on our site. It scans a directory of mp3's and outputs an RSS feed, and other than our difficulties getting ID3v2 to be read, things seem to work flawlessly. We use feedburner to make up for dirCaster's limitations.

As parent pointed out, most of the "new" Blogger features are actually standard now in WordPress which is not only better than Blogger in about every aspect, but it's also open source. I seamlessly migrated my blog from Blogger to Wordpress a while ago, and I'm not even thinking of moving back.

WordPress is a very competent open source CMS.

I don't know of any general-purpose libraries, but the latest version of Wordpress has a system like that that you could rip out.

When I came across the parent comment, I was curious to see how it actually worked. Unlike the common XSS attacks, this one doesn't require JavaScript to be enabled, when searching the vulnerable site, it outputs the search query back to the browser, the query is stored in the $s variable, apparently the variable isn't sanitized before being output, so one can inject whatever HTML code they like into the page. The vulnerability is mentioned here on the WP support forums, sadly posters assumed that such code wasn't vulnerable.

Movable Type can run on Postgresql. Create an installation of Movable Type using Postgresql. Export the posts from your MySQL Movable Type installation and import them into your Postgresql Movable Type installation.

If it's a question of moving to WordPress, there are many who have made the switch before you and some have even supplied instructions.

If what you're really looking for is a one-click method to make the shift, maybe you should reconsider your future in IT.

Wordpress is an excellent open source blogging tool. Couple that with Bad behavior and Spam Karma 2 and you've got yourself a near impenetrable blog to spam in your comments. The new version of Wordpress has tools to migrate from some popular blogging systems, so.. go check it out.

...A blog entry about Linux being too hard to use?

I love the irony that the author is complaining that Linux and OSS are too hard to use.

Hmm... well, the main advantage of LAMP is that the various pieces Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP work really really well with each other. On the development tools side, there isn't anything free that matches Visual Studio in sheer development speed (I use vim myself), but I've heard good things about PHP Eclipse. On the database side, PHPMyAdmin beats everything else I've ever used, open source and commercial. If you're really interested in rapid development and programming ease, I'd suggest looking into Ruby on Rails.

However, the real wealth of tools come in the form of the applications that are built on top of the LAMP stack, including blogging tools and Content Management Systems which make creating and maintaining a website infinitely easier.

All well and good, but the real step needed for OSS CMS is to create one that an average user can administer. By "average" I mean anyone who isn't a hard core code geek. The kind of person who is comfortable installing these systems to their server, but who is more interested in tweaking the look and adding content than spending hours figuring out the arcane thinking of the people who wrote the code.

I've tried Joomla, as well as few other top rated CMS, and found all of them pretty much imcomprehensible. I'm sure that there is some underlying logic to the Administration of each of these systems, but I have failed to find it. Terminology, functionality, it all cries out for testing by real users.

Blog software like Wordpress has managed to make Administration nice, understandable, and constantly improving, so why can't CMS like Joomla do the same?

And of course, they really do need some real documentation, not half baked wikis and forums.

More and more specialized networks of blogs seems to be in the future as well. As tools like Wordpress MU (http://mu.wordpress.org) become more stable and people begin to modify them to focus on certain features like video (http://whirrl.com) or audio/podcasting I think people will find more niches to express themselves and their interests.

This might be a valuable invention for very non-technical users, but there are already plenty of solutions out there for creating web content easily. Most weblogging systems already allow the user to create permanent pages outside of a weblogging structure, see Douglass, Little, & Smith's Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress . If you can use Wordpress to make a huge e-commerce site, Grandma can certainly use it to put up a static but re-editable set of photos (once grandson has installed the backend). Google is definitely repeating past accomplishments here.

WordPress+LightPress:

- easy to install
- easy to administer
- clean
- faster then Drupal, Serendipity, TextPattern, ...
- php+mysql based

http://wordpress.org/
http://lightpress.org/

because I missed some quotation marks, that should be Wordpress 2.0

I've been using WordPress 1.5.2 for the last several months to blog about my daughter Bethany who was born in July. I upgraded my daughters blog and my nephews blog to 2.0 last night. I recommend following the upgrade instructions, they list several different times to backup your database and files and not to go any further unless you do. Even though I never had to use the backup, I'm glad I had it. Once the upgrade completed I couldn't browse my blog, but the problem was related to a coding bug with my custom theme. After I fixed it everything has been rock solid.

Some of the biggest changes I've noticed so far is the admin screen using a Google like dragging and dropping interface for placement of window frames. The added WYSIWYG HTML editor is nice, but when I click on the formatting icons in Firefox none of their actions "stick." I'm pretty sure the problem is related to an extension, I just haven't figured out which one yet. They added a theme preview when picking themes instead of the text one they use to have and categories for your posts can be added on the fly. An even more exhaustive list is here.

I've only used it twice to post entries since the upgrade, but I'm really happy with what I've seen so far.

WordPress MU is multi-user version of the famous WordPress blogging application. It is ideal for people wanting to offer a hosted version of WordPress
http://mu.wordpress.org/

Having learned the things I'm about to list in a less-preferred order, I recommend learning in this order. Some may overlap a bit.

First, learn a lot more about HTML than you know. Learn how to create the correct structure in your sites, and try to avoid excessive tags such as tables and divs. Use page headers (h1, h2,...) and paragraph (p) tags and avoid line breaks (br) unless you're actually attempting to do a line break and not just creating space. Here's a good article to read: http://brainstormsandraves.com/articles/semantics/ structure/.

Learn XHTML, and while you're at it, learn a little bit about basic XML and how it works. W3Schools has a good introduction. XHTML, XML. Don't go too far just yet with XML.

While you're learning XHTML, you'll inevitably encounter CSS. The W3C has plenty of links to articles. Make absolutely sure that you learn CSS, it is the pivot point of learning truly professional looking web development (even if you don't want to do it professionally).

Eventually, you'll need to either build your own system for a blog (as you mentioned you'd like to do), or use a blog management system such as Wordpress. If you choose to do it yourself, you need to learn 2 things. SQL and PHP. I recommend using MySQL (an implementation of SQL) because it's free. Most webhosts will support PHP and MySQL as well, so it's more widespread. W3Schools has the easiest introduction to SQL that I've seen. PHP.net has a complete PHP reference. Make sure to check out the mysql section, because that's what you'll be using most.

Scripting comes next. DevGuru has a pretty good, although incomplete reference for basic JavaScript. Basically, just do a search on Google for Javascript reference and you'll pretty much be able to find anything you want. As you get more advanced, try to understand more complex JavaScript such as the Prototype library, among others.

At this point, you'll have a firm grip on web development. Go back and refresh your skills with XHTML and CSS and you'll find out how much you still have left to learn.

There are many other things to learn about web development, specifically if you want to do web programming and application development. That's a whole other can of worms though.

My setup:

• A 6 year old IBM NetVista (cost 100 NZ dollars)
• Wordpress (free)
• Ubuntu(free)
• Dyndns(free)

Setting up taught me things I didn't know about MySQL, Apache and Ubuntu and I don't have to rely on a third party provider.

Profit???

WordPress (PHP) is an amazing piece of software. I used to use Movable Type, and their respective pros and cons tend to cancel each other out, so it's really a matter of taste and priorities. There are tons of other solutions - TextPattern (PHP) and Typo (Ruby on Rails) are also popular and widely supported, and if neither will do, check your favorite search engine's index.

And yes, the word "blog" is an amazing eyesore, and it's just a contraction for the hell of it. "Weblog" or even the accepted ancestral "log" means so much more that it's hard to believe why people would use the four letter alternative other than to feel special.

Serious bloggers usually use software such as Wordpress or MovableType to blog. Both of those have RSS feeds built in. Six Apart actually owns LiveJournal and the web-based version of MT called TypePad.

I'm not saying LJ and Blogger users aren't serious, and all users of WP or MT are. Just stating what is the "norm."

Actually, the statement was quite clear that the relationship existed "Because it's free". Whether the "free" meant price or some set of freedoms, it's not true. The statement applied to more than just WordPress even though it was in a section of an article concerning WordPress.

But it will be entertaining to watch you prove that absolutely nobody will take money providing any degree of support for WordPress. I expect it will take you some time to exhaustively detail this, so might I suggest starting with the commercial service providers pointed to on WordPress' website just because they seem to be obvious choices for someone looking to pay someone for WordPress service.

It seems like there's a big world of consultants out there and I don't know them all. I'm guessing that there are more than just me who continue to do paid support for a variety of GPL-covered programs.

using a plugin called WPG2 written by Ozgreg, I use Gallery 2 exclusively both as a standalone and embedded in WordPress 1.5.x - works great. looking forward to the upcoming WordPress 1.6 souped up with Ajax. =) i strongly believe that these 2 powerful personal publishing platforms will one day become a standard package to be offered competitively by hosting providers. :) Gallery - http://gallery.sf.net/ WordPress - http://wordpress.org/ wpg2 plugin - http://wpg2.ozgreg.com/forums/

Yes the title is a troll. No, the point is not.

Linux (and open source in general) is always touted as better than closed-source because there is such a large community of geeks who know the stuff well, so anyone looking for information can tap into the community of geeks to get answers, instead of calling an idiot tech rep for $$/hour.

Except that communities of geeks are notoriously unapproachable, and their willingness to part with their geekily gained information is low. If the responses to this Slashdot article are any indication, geeks are more interested in belittling others (including other geeks) than actually providing useful information.

Albeit the geekish hordes of /. are somewhat (though not much) more helpful than McAfee's removal instructions, which are to upgrade my version of a Windows virus checker. But SD really does not have a better answer for the concerned admin on what he should be looking for to ensure his system is safe.

BTW, Wordpress 1.5 is safe.

Wordpress says they're not vulnerable since 1.5: http://wordpress.org/development/2005/11/wordpress -is-secure/

-Dom

To be honest, the RSS vs. Atom thing is a lot like DVD+R and DVD-R - at this point they might as well be interchangeable.

Just about every feed parser handles both Atom and RSS feeds. Using a tool like Magpie RSS (PHP) or the Universal Feed Parser (Python) the format of any given feed is entirely transparent to application developers. RSS 1.0? RSS 2.0? Atom 0.3? It all gets processed by the parser in a nearly identical way.

Already tools like Movable Type/Typepad or WordPress generate both RSS and Atom feeds by default. The vast majority of users don't know and don't care which feed format they're reading so long as it works. Both the toolkits and the applications use both formats and there's really little reason why they can't continue to support both.

There doesn't have to be a single "winner" in the syndication feed wars. Atom and RSS can exist together for some time, and arguing that this is a zero-sum game in which one and only one feed format can exist is ridiculous. As long as the difference is transparent to end users, and relatively transparent to developers, neither format will totally conquer the other.

It says "All it does is connect the Web server to your Python code with as little fuss as possible. It doesn't make decisions about what other tools to use, ..."

And then in the very next paragraph, it says: "Instead of relying on Apache or another Web server, CherryPy runs its own small Python-based Web server."

No, no, no!

I love CherryPy as a way of routing requests to Python objects and functions. Rock on!

But look, I'm running like 20 wiki and 5 custom web apps and a few WordPress installations on my server.

And they are all plugged into Apache.

So, actually, in fact, CherryPy has now made some decisions about what tools I'm supposed to use.

Sure, I can forward requests from Apache to the CherryPy server, but that is yet another hassle, it is yet another thing to support and maintain and think about.

I wish instead that the CherryPy dev's had made it so there were multiple adapters to the CherryPy system.

All that said:

CherryPy is my favorite system for doing web apps in Python. I've used it, I've loved it, it's great. It does make programming WebApps "fun," which is perverse. So, it's succeeded.

But I strongly dislike how I have to do this funny Apache business to get it to run on port 80, or I have to give people weird 8080 addresses, like you saw in the article.

Another thing I dislike, is that it's kind of tricky to get it to do XML-RPC, in my experience. (Then again, that was 3 months ago. Perhaps things have changed now.)

(I just use AutoXmlRpcServer or AutoXmlRpcCgi for when it's XML-RPC alone, without a web side along with it.)

But again: CherryPy is my favorite, when there is no XML-RPC aspect, and when I don't mind the weird config stuff I have to do to get it to cooperate with Apache.

but Wordpress is the one for me. It is insanely easy to set up and use, while at the same time, very powerful and adaptable.

Wordpress recommended by me.

Personally, I'd say go with drupal if you need a really flexible system than can do just about anything. That said, it can be a bit daunting. For a smaller site, I'd go with WordPress (there are rumblings that they'll end up compatible at some point down the road). One nice aspect to WordPress is that the administration console is separate from the site, so it offers a separation of paradigms for users, although they drupal is heading in that direction I believe. There's also an active community of developers behind WordPress, although that can probably be said for most of them.

The community is very helpful and there is already a huge range of themes and plugins available. There are even several threads in the support forums on family blogs

wordpress released a fix for this on June 29. Changelog for 1.5.1.3

wordpress released a fix for this on June 29. Changelog for 1.5.1.3

I find that outline Mode in GNU Emacs works great. If you are wedded to the HTML output, consider Markdown: the syntax is easy to learn, you can write raw text and get decently formatted output on the other side. And, if you decide to move to a wiki later, some (like WordPress) can support Markdown syntax, so no reformatting is needed.

Have you looked at Textpattern? It's simple, fast, and easy-to-use, once you get the hang of it. I will probably be moving to it once version 1.0 comes out, which should be any day now...

Best of all, unlike another open source ethically challenged weblog system, they make their money honestly, by running a hosting service called TextDrive.

Getting results for: http://wordpress.org/articles/health-care--mesothe lioma-asbestos-law-suits.htm:
Keyword: Asbestos
Keyword: Asbestos Cancer
Keyword: Asbestos Claim
Keyword: Asbestos Claims
Keyword: Asbestos Compensation
Keyword: Asbestos Disease
Keyword: Asbestos Diseases
Keyword: Asbestos Exposure
Keyword: Asbestos Law
Keyword: Asbestos Lawsuit
Keyword: Asbestos Lawyer
Keyword: Asbestos Litigation
Keyword: Asbestos Lung
Keyword: Asbestos Lung Cancer
Keyword: Asbestos Reform
Keyword: Asbestos Symptoms
Keyword: Court Filing
Keyword: How to File a Lawsuit
Keyword: Lawsuit
Keyword: Lung Cancer Mesothelioma
Keyword: Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma
Keyword: Mesothelioma Asbestos
Keyword: Mesothelioma Compensation
Keyword: Mesothelioma Lawsuits
Keyword: Mesothelioma Symptoms
Keyword: Pleural Mesothelioma

Getting results for: http://wordpress.org/articles/health-care--mesothe lioma-asbestos-law-suits.htm:
Keyword: Asbestos
Keyword: Asbestos Cancer
Keyword: Asbestos Claim
Keyword: Asbestos Claims
Keyword: Asbestos Compensation
Keyword: Asbestos Disease
Keyword: Asbestos Diseases
Keyword: Asbestos Exposure
Keyword: Asbestos Law
Keyword: Asbestos Lawsuit
Keyword: Asbestos Lawyer
Keyword: Asbestos Litigation
Keyword: Asbestos Lung
Keyword: Asbestos Lung Cancer
Keyword: Asbestos Reform
Keyword: Asbestos Symptoms
Keyword: Court Filing
Keyword: How to File a Lawsuit
Keyword: Lawsuit
Keyword: Lung Cancer Mesothelioma
Keyword: Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma
Keyword: Mesothelioma Asbestos
Keyword: Mesothelioma Compensation
Keyword: Mesothelioma Lawsuits
Keyword: Mesothelioma Symptoms
Keyword: Pleural Mesothelioma

Um... unfortunately, all ranking program depends on honesty on the end user in one way or another. Google's pagerank depends on the assumption that many people are honest (most search engine depends on everyone being honest). However, in this case the website DELIBERATELY tried to game Google's search engine for their own benefit.

http://wordpress.org/support/topic.php?id=23657

or here's the key excerpt from it...

"The content in /articles is essentially advertising by a third party that we host for a flat fee. I'm not sure if we're going to continue it much longer, but we're committed to this month at least, it was basically an experiment. However around the beginning of Feburary donations were going down as expenses were ramping up, so it seemed like a good way to cover everything. The adsense on those pages is not ours and I have no idea what they get on it, we just get a flat fee. The money is used just like donations but more specifically it's been going to the business/trademark expenses so it's not entirely out of my pocket anymore."

Yes, Google don't own the internet. But they do OWN the search engine algorithm that we use. While I might not agree with Google's action, I do understand the reasoning. You will be mad too if someone deliberately tried to screw around with your creation.

In addition to what has already been posted, there's also this and this. Now, here's a cached copy of http://wordpress.org/articles/health-care--mesothe lioma-law-info.htm

...and here's a few rules it may break:

• You represent and warrant that (a) all of the information provided by You to Google to enroll in the Program is correct and current; (b) You are the owner of each Site or that You are legally authorized to act on behalf of the owner of such Site(s) for the purposes of this Agreement and the Program; and (c) You have all necessary right, power and authority to enter into this Agreement and to perform the acts required of You hereunder.
• No Google ad may be placed on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads, whether or not the page content is relevant.
• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Do not participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web as your website may be affected adversely by those links.

• I don't know whether the Google AdSense ads are Wordpress's or not. However, if not, it is clear that someone at Wordpress posted them on behalf of Hot Nacho, making them an accomplice.

Since WordPress (and many other blog packages) have open source and open posting protocols to work with external software, spam bots don't typically use the actual comment form.

Indeed, this is one good way that anti-spam tools filter away spammers -- by checking if a personal actually filled out the form!

If you want to block WordPress spam, check out any of a *large* number of plugins. (I use SpamKarma, but YMMV.)
http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Spam_Tools

The difference being that Blogger's spam isn't created by the people that run Blogger.

The uproar is over the fact that the lead developer and site maintainer of Wordpress was responsible for hosting the spammy pages. Even the page for donations has the hidden links.

The stated reason for this is to cover his costs and hire a full-time developer, but this raises a lot of questions about the need to do so -- What exactly are those costs? And is it really worth hiring a full-timer if it has to be funded with spam?

It doesn't help his case that he's presently on vacation in Italy.

(I'm not trying to bash him personally -- just trying to clarify the issue for those that don't understand.)

By default, WordPress sends out update "pings" with posts (or a fresh install) to the Ping-O-Matic update service:
http://pingomatic.com/

I strongly suspect spammers continually scan Ping-O-Matic for new blogs and new posts. My blog is updated sporadically and I always notice an uptick in spam attempts right after I post.

Don't despair. WordPress has a lot of excellent anti-spam tools. I use Spam-Karma, but there are many others:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Spam_Tools

Add a good anti-spam plugin, and you shouldn't see any spam on your WordPress blog. It's really a great tool.

There are lots of good spam-block plugins for WordPress. I basically receive *ZERO* spam comments or trackbacks that actually get through.

Personally, I use Spam Karma:
http://unknowngenius.com/blog/wordpress/spam-karma /

But there are loads of other good plugins:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Spam_Tools

Don't complain about spam comments and trackbacks--get even and get rid of them!

Reaction...

Go here: http://planet.wordpress.org/

Read. Maybe read it again if yer slow. Sounds like the guy was simply trying to raise a few bucks to support what is IMO one of the best blogging apps out there.

Slashdot is considered a blog. It follows the blog structure, it has people posting stories, people commenting on them... and being as widely read as it is it really is the MOAB: the Mother Of All Blogs. Slashcode is pretty similar to other blogging software packages, like WordPress, for example, with some specialized extras like friend / foe and journals.

The only difference between Slashdot and a normal blog is that normal bloggers read their stories before posting.

Then there isn't any question as to who owns it. WordPress has got to be the easiest web application to install.

And we're meant to beleive a person whose server can't stand up to a /. 4 seconds after being posted. I bet this guy uses IE.

No, he uses the fully standards-compliant GPLed Wordpress. More likely than not it was MySQL that fell over anyway. Read the error message.

While this will prevent spammers from bumping up their sites' Page Rank (probably their primary motivation for comment spam anyway), it doesn't prevent their bots from spamming targeted blogs etc. in the first place. That is still best handled by the blog software providers.

For example, WordPress has a variety of different plugins for handling comment spam. The best one I've seen renders a series of characters graphically (a la TicketBastard) which the user (a human, of course) has to type into a text field on the comment form before their comment is accepted. Blogs implementing this type of mechanism typically have spam coming from bots drop down to zero.