Blog Software Smackdown

An anonymous reader writes "With published numbers saying there are approximately 70,000 new blogs being created each day, and the total number of blogs doubling every 5 months, it's no wonder that everyone and their dog is wondering whether to setup their own blog for a chance at fame, or perhaps a book publishing deal. The question then becomes: What software should you use? SitePoint has just published The Blog Software Smackdown which takes a look at Movable Type, WordPress, and Textpattern. Pick one, and take your stab at fame or notoriety."

Comments

iBlog

[BWJones]

I'd should put in a plug for iBlog from lifli software. After trying a few blogging software packages over the past three years or so, I have standardized on iBlog for my site. If you run OS X, iBlog is one of the easiest packages out there that allows a fairly decent degree of flexibility. I chose it because of the ease of hosting images from my photography and media files along with the minimal time required to manage and back up the entire database. My time is getting extremely valuable these days and the less time I have to spend managing a blog package, the better.

Interestingly, it is amazing how much traffic and the variety of opportunities that have popped up from posting to a blog. There have been invitations to give talks, queries for visits from folks like Adobe and Apple, requests for images to publish and purchase etc....etc...etc... Additionally, blogs serve as a means for professional contacts to get to know a side of you that never really appears in a professional setting. For instance, a couple of potential investors have found my site and a common dialogue about photography certainly helped smooth early meetings out a bit.

I never would have thought about these possibilities as the blog was originally simply set up to communicate with friends and family. I hate the term, but the "Web 2.0" is starting to fulfill the promise of the Internet back in the late 80's. With a blog, publishing becomes relatively straight forward such as the quirky children's books that I just posted. Granted, the signal to noise ratio is going down with increased blogspace traffic, but search engines have realized where the growth is and will help with that over the next little while. Now if we could just get rid of the spamblogs....

Livejournal?

[Donniedarkness]

Is there anythign wrong with Livejournal? I'm not a big fan of most of the blogs there, but the interface is really easy to use... The article doesn't mention any negatives to it...

And I've also gotta mention Xanga here... I HATE Xanga, but a lot of kids that I know have learn HTML because of it.

EXAMPLE OF WHY I HATE XANGA: http://www.xanga.com/capntomakeithapn

pLog / LifeTYpe

[shri]

Sort of disappointed that they did not consider pLog / Lifetype in their smackdown. I've found that to tbe only really usable multi-user system. It is critical for blogs to evolve into community platforms and not just remain as platforms for individual egos. Imagine starting a blog on a given topic and attracting 5 visitors a day... (isnt that the max for ego blogs?)? Now imagine letting those 5 visitors start their own blogs and attracting 5 more visitors a day.

That is an ego/ecosystem. Sorry ... no single user blogs for me please.

I still think "blog" is a dumb name

[Old Man Kensey]

Awhile ago I posted my opinion that "(we)blog" is a really dumb term; originating in a needlessly confusing coinage and so vague as to be essentially meaning-free at this point. (Apologies to Jorn Barger, but that's how I feel.) Back when the infamous JonKatz posted his grand weblog article on Slashdot, a large minority of the commenters apparently had similar feelings. When I expressed the sentiment on Slashdot earlier this year, I got flamed (though again a significant minority agreed that it's potentially confusing and frankly just sounds dumb). What a difference six years makes, eh?

At this point I'm hoping blogs will do what portals did (you all remember portal mania, right? No?) -- become so blatantly overused and silly to the point of self-parody that they just dry up and blow away. What used to be "portals" continue to exist; they are known by the more pedestrian but more meaningful name "websites". Here's hoping all these "blogs" will become "journals" and "news" again.

Re:Complaining about the options

[nine-times]

I'd stay away from Movable Type. Well, let me back up and say, put a little time into your choice. You can always migrate to other software, but it probably won't be trouble free, so it's better if you can stick with the same package once you start writing.

And it's partially for that reason that I'd advise people to stick with an open source solution. Not for philosophic reasons so much, but because you can make your own changes.

It's not one of those things where open-source advocates talk about the benefits of being able to rewrite sections of your kernel, either. You don't need to be much of a programmer. If you're already writing your own HTML and such, it isn't much of a jump to alter a little PHP here and there.

So if you think you might want to, at some point, dig in a little and customize your weblog, I wouldn't go the closed-source route. I'd basically say that, all things being equal, Wordpress is the way to go. It seems well-supported and feature-rich, and there's a pretty big community behind it. However, try a few out before you commit. OpenSourceCMS gives live demos of both the public and admin sections of both Wordpress and Textpattern, so try them both and make up your own mind. Hell, they're free, so you can even download them, set them up, and try things out.