Blog Software Recommendation

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Ollie Saunders
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Blog Software Recommendation

Post by Ollie Saunders »

OK, so I'm finally putting some serious effort into getting a blog and I've decided the features I want. Well more than a blog; a site for hosting my stuff that a blog is a major put of. So I'm going to have these sections
  • Blog
  • Lab - for coding experiments and examples potentially as large as whole PHP applications
  • Music - for the music I make/made
  • BlogRoll - other people's blogs I like
On the blog itself I want these features
  • Comments - with some legal markup
  • Ability to have words, images, links, quotes, tables and lists in posts themselves or pure HTML is fine
  • Spam filtering
  • Ability to delete or edit comments if I need to
  • Trackbacks
  • Tagging
  • RSS - important
So the big question is... is there a good piece of PHP software out there that can do this? A piece of software that don't have to take over the whole site so I can still add my own stuff into the lab or add new site sections or can I going to have to write all this myself? Perhaps there's a dedicated blog library type thing? Amazingly I never really looked into this before.
Last edited by Ollie Saunders on Wed May 02, 2007 1:45 am, edited 2 times in total.
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RobertGonzalez
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Post by RobertGonzalez »

Wordpress is a great tool for this.
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superdezign
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Post by superdezign »

Most blogs that are available for integration into websites don't hold you back in any way. You've just got to know a bit, and I'm sure you know enough. :-p
matthijs
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Post by matthijs »

I second Wordpress. It's all php, even in the templates themselves. So you can adjust everything. Or put up non-wordpress pages next to it. If you'd like I can show some sites which I've done in wp.
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Ollie Saunders
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Post by Ollie Saunders »

Should I worry about this or this?

Note: edited desire for tagging to original post.
matthijs
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Post by matthijs »

You mean security-wise? There have been and will be security problems in wordpress. Each one is one too many. But there have always been quick updates/patches as far as I know.

Of course, if anyone knows a similar CMS (feature-wise) without any bugs or security issues, please let me know.
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Kieran Huggins
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Post by Kieran Huggins »

I've always wanted to try expression engine - you might find a lot of the features you're looking for there...
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RobertGonzalez
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Post by RobertGonzalez »

Wordpress is actively maintained and getting better all the time. Yes, they have had security issues both in the code and in their repository, most recently in the 2.1.1 branch (I think it this branch) where someone managed to get into the repository and corrupt a file. But it was corrected within hours and a new release was put out immediately.

For those not into Wordpress, Serendipity (S9Y) is a decent application. Blogger is another tool, though I am really not into they way they handle their application (it is never yours). Overall though, I like Wordpress for a lot of reasons, most notable the extensibility of it from the user perspective.

As for the code, it still makes me want to puke (it is quasi OOP in a mixed, globalized procedural set up). But it does work, fast and well.
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Buddha443556
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Post by Buddha443556 »

TOTALLY OFF TOPIC:
Everah wrote:As for the code, it still makes me want to puke (it is quasi OOP in a mixed, globalized procedural set up). But it does work, fast and well.
Fast and well on what? With 11 database queries and 49 includes per request, Wordpress is pretty much begging for a dedicate server with a PHP opcode cache installed. Not that I'm picking on Wordpress, I just happen to have it installed for testing. Got MODx installed too. It does a better job of caching (actually not only reducing database queries but also the number of includes) but I'm not going to run out and install it on a shared server either.
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RobertGonzalez
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Post by RobertGonzalez »

I have it installed on 2 shared accounts and on 2 shared domains on a dedicated server. It runs between 20 and 40 queries per page load and executes in less than a second on all of the sites that it is installed on. So in my experience (I am not doubting yours or arguing with your experience) it has performed fast and well on all of my setups.
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Post by matthijs »

My experience with several sites on wordpress are pretty good speedwise. Most sites it's almost instant/less then a sec refresh. But, that's no benchmark of course.

I've heard good stories about expression engine as well
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dreamscape
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Post by dreamscape »

Buddha443556 wrote:With 11 database queries and 49 includes per request
That is really nothing at all... web hosts are not running Pentium 2's anymore, you know.
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Buddha443556
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Post by Buddha443556 »

dreamscape wrote:
Buddha443556 wrote:With 11 database queries and 49 includes per request
That is really nothing at all... web hosts are not running Pentium 2's anymore, you know.
The bottle neck is the hard drives not the processor. Database queries and includes are file (and OS) operations. RAID helps but even that setup can be overwhelmed by traffic on a shared server. When the hard drive cache fills up, that is when you see how slow it is to read from a hard drive. This is something you don't catch with benchmarking- it's an edge case but one that frequently occurs on shared servers during peak traffic.
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dreamscape
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Post by dreamscape »

the network is going to give out long before the hard drive gives out doing 11 queries per request. :roll:
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