I’m not sure who Jeff Kang is (he sent me a note via Orkut, indicating we were Orkut buddies, although I don’t recognize his name and Orkut apparently isn’t feeling well tonight so I can’t look him up there at the moment). It’s apparently a PHP-based, server-side blogging tool. The site is thin on details about the product or installation (I haven’t bothered trying to upload it myself yet), not to mention About Us stuff. The G-name would lead one to believe Google has a role, though it’s far from clear whether that’s the case. There is also an accompanying blog, not surprisingly, and a forum, but niether shed much light (okay, I just barely scanned them, but nothing caught my eye). If anyone knows more or has observed more than I have, I trust you’ll point it out.

Link

So, I’ve been meaning to write this post for several days, but I’ve been busy. Busy getting ready for a new full-time job. Yes, as a few of you might have already seen here or here or here or elsewhere, I have taken a position at DoubleClick as Research Manager.

Honestly, I’m thrilled. My private consulting was actually going quite well over the last three years, especially this year, but this job is just a great fit for lots of reasons. It will, however, leave me less time for extracurricular blogging. (You can bet one of my first recommendations on the job will be a…blog, but that wouldn’t be extracurricular, now, would it?)

Less time, but not no time. I am pleased with this little resource I’ve started here. I have ended up getting a few reasonable consulting leads out of the blog, though I can’t honestly say that response on that score has been overwhelming. Moreso have been press interviews — I’ve been averaging about two a week on the subject of business blogs for the last few months.

Anyway, instead of walking away from this or updating it with a post here and there every few weeks, I’ve decided to turn it into a modest group blog. A lot of smart folks out there already touch on this topic of business blogs, but most do it in a rather scatter-shot fashion, along with posts on lots of other unrelated topics. A few others also concentrate on this topic (including some of those I link to in my blogroll), but with all due respect none that I follow do it with as much dedication as I think this resource could offer. Therefore, I’ve asked already a couple of other bloggers to pitch in, and I plan to ask two or three others to pitch in over the coming weeks.

So, without further ado, I’m pleased to announce that Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion and B.L. Ochman of What’s Next will begin blogging here, as soon as they see fit. Steve, as many of you probably know, is a blogging machine, consistently scooping me already on things related to this topic. B.L. is someone I’ve gotten to know personally in the last year or so and have a lot of respect for. They’re both PR professionals, which I don’t hold against them. I’ll try to find some other folks to help out here who come at the topic from a different discipline, so this isn’t doesn’t turn into just another PR blog. (BTW, I’ll update the site shortly, probably over the weekend, to include pointers to them in the left column About This Blog stuff.)

Anyway, thanks to all my many (several?) readers who seem to have found value in this site over the last few months. Anyway, this isn’t goodbye, it’s just hello steady paycheck.

UPDATE:
Great news: Todd S. of A Penny For… has also agreed to pitch in.

Folks, I’ve been contacted by a journalist for a major media outlet who wants to write a story about blogs helping people land jobs. She’s seeking examples of such. Only caveat is outside of the realm of journalism, as she already has examples of that. If you have such a story to share or know of someone who does, email me at rick at e-summary dot com. Need this ASAP; don’t bother later than Friday of this week.

Search Engine Watch, the definitive site on all things search engine, now has a blog authored by Search Engine Watch’s found Danny Sullivan and Gary Price.

Link

Engadget’s Phillip Torrone Hacks
the Evolution 2000 in seconds

This is so incredible. You had better believe that Kryptonite, makers of the most popular bicycle locks in the United States, will know what blogs are from this week forward. I believe the story was actually broken last weekend on a web-based discussion board, BikeForums.com, where a user observed that using a 10-cent Bic ballpoint pen you could easily pick a $100 Kryptonite lock. A variety of Kryptonite products seem vulnerable to this. The above link (see headline) is to a video of how to do it, in case you had any doubts. (Other videos here and here.) I just heard the story also on National Public Radio, and it also ran today in the NY Times, and it’s basically breaking out all over the place.

NYT photo

Incredibly, Kryptonite’s site (which is loading veeerrrry slooooowly today) still has nothing about this issue, a week after the story broke, despite the homepage ironically proclaiming “This is the place to get the most information about our products, our dealer locations, our company and more.” The most recent news on the homepage is about their having moved office locations in June 2002. (I see that they did provide a response to Engadget, and it’s less than encouraging that they’re on top of the crisis, or unclear that they even view it as a crisis.)

This is simply going to devistate Kryptonite. Too bad, I’ve always been a fan. Of course, this isn’t principally a communication problem; it’s a product problem. The only thing I could think that might save their business at this point would be a massive recall/refund for every customer with a U-lock. But this is also a communication problem. As a customer (I have four of their locks), I would really like to know whether this problem affect their other products, or whether it is limited to that Evolution 2000. But their communication on this sucks. The story broke online, yet there is nothing about it on their web site. They could really, really use a blog to try to contain the damage ASAP. But looking at their actions so far, I am not optimistic. For myself, I will probably go out and buy another brand this weekend, as I’m not going to risk losing my bike while they try to get their PR act together. (I’m certainly not going to bother trying to call them and wait on hold for 2 days with the volume of calls they must be getting now.)

As Phillip Torrone writes in his Engadget follow-up post:

We’ve spent over $100 on these types of locks for our bicycles, and hearing “the world just got tougher and so did our locks,” kinda got us a little miffed. The world didnít get tougher, it got Bic pens, blogs and your locks got opened.

Sad.

Engadget: Kryptonite Evolution 2000 U- Lock hacked by a Bic Pen

Alright, this isn’t strictly a business blog, though I suppose it probablay has commercial advertising ambitions, but having lived in Budapest Hungary myself for five years in the early 1990s as part of Generation Expat, I have a soft spot for the place. A friend living in Hungary tells me that the author of this new daily blog, Erik D’Amato, intends for it to be “the Gawker of Budapest.” So far, it looks fairly well on the mark.

Having run a newspaper myself for 2-1/2 years in Budapest and struggling with trying to get Hungarians to see the value in advertising in an expat publication (this fresh after communisism, when the whole idea of ads was a foreign concept, literally), I suspect it’s not going to be a cake walk to get Hungarians to advertise on a blog. But I wish him well.

Link

A week after her blogosphere-bombshell “Shitcanned” post where TroutGirl (aka Joyce Park) wrote of getting fired from Friendster for blogging, she tells her side of the story to Red Herring. I still haven’t heard Friendster’s side of the story. Have they told it somewhere that I’ve overlooked?

Thanks to Olivier for the link.

Red Herring: No Friendster of Mine

Very interesting interview on last night’s Marketplace radio program from American Public Media, an interview with futurist Andrew Zolli of Z + Partners. Zolli talks about the impact of blogs, social networks, peer-to-peer behavior and other online trends as creating a “numerical social cartography” that is having a big impact on marketing by letting (smart) companies track buying trends in explicit detail. He knows of what he speaks (Z + Partners even have a (somewhat neglected) blog of their own), with references to David Sifry’s Technorait and The Virtual Book Tour. Here are some roughly transcribed excerpts:

Retailers and marketers of all kinds are looking around social networks to try to create new forms of economic value. A great example of that is something arranged by an author in California called The Virtual Book Tour…. This one little blog [on the virtual tour] may have 100 readers. Well, that’s just as good as going to Minetonka and doing a reading and doing a reading at the local Borders.
…
The file sharing we generate on the Web…. There’s an oportunity to see people doing that in real time and building maps and networks of their social relationships. So this person who is a friend of this person introduced this song to this social network and it spread this quickly. That’s of unbelievable value. That’s the equivalent of going into that person’s bedroom and saying “I was there when this person made that person a mix tape.”
…
Commercial anthropology is here to stay. It is going to lead to shift in how we think about global marketing. We can get very effective at reaching exactly the right five people. That’s the kind of effect this kind of social cartography has on the wolrd of marketing.

Now that’s what I’m talking about!

Marketplace.org: Internet Trends

I’ve said before (here and here) that movies and business blogs are a great mix. Gawker Media is now introducing its second specially commissioned business blog. Nick Denton writes:

Hey, Rick — We’ve launched our second custom blog. The client this time is New Line. We’re doing a site around A Dirty Shame, the new movie by John Waters. Remy, who wrote the Nike blog, is helming this one too.

Gawker Media’s New Commissioned Business Blog, A Dirty Shame, for New Line

Our latest review of a blog publishing platform comes from Harold Jarche and Cameron Bales about Drupal. I knew relatively little about this platform, so I found this review particularly informative. It is thorough and generally quite positive.

Overall, the system sounds quite sophisticated, with advanced CMS (content management system) features that go beyond most blog platforms, particularly in regard to scalability and performance issues as well as administration controls. It is an open-source platform, like WordPress, with an active and growing base of developers and users. Also like WordPress, it is based on PHP, which aids its performance and scalability strengths, and like WordPress (and Movable Type), it requires users to have their own web server or web host. Read Harold and Cameron’s full review below.

Drupal Review

By Harold Jarche
Cameron Bales

Drupal (droo-puhl) is the English pronunciation for the Dutch word ‘druppel’ which stands for “drop.” Drupal is a website building system that allows blogs, stories (like slash), forums (like phpBB). You can set up a publishing workflow so some users are writers and some editors. It has XML/RSS publishing and Aggregation features. Once you figure it out, Drupal is easy to use with the basic features. The great feature about Drupal is how scalable it is. It can start as a small website, but expand into an enterprise CMS.

General performance: What makes this different/better than other blog publishing platforms?

If you are planning a large or busy site you may be excited by the search function, which will search all body text on your site, the cacheing, which pre-builds page content so there are not so many queries to the database so pages are sent faster, and the throttling, which will turn off high-cost features when the site is busy. Cacheing and throttling will allow your Drupal site to survive a “Slashdotting” better than many CMS tools. If you don’t have access to your logs, or for a different view on access to your site, Drupal has built in statistics so you can see what content is popular. You can use this to put up “Popular Today” or “Popular for All Time” information in your site.

Notes on performance:
opensource_performance.pdf
Comparing CMS Performance

What are some of the best advantages about this platform?

Drupal is not a hosted solution, so you will need to find a server. This is an advantage for those who wish to control their content, a critical issue after many years of blog posts, especially if you want to write the next Pulitzer-winning novel. For hosted Drupal solutions, a commercial alternative is Bryght.com.

Being more than just a blogging tool, Drupal is searchable CMS, allows you to quickly build a taxonomy (easy metadata), create static content, and add multiple bloggers. It is a complete web site, portal and blog tool.

The Drupal network uses a distributed authentication system, so that you can use the same login for any Drupal site that has the function activated. It’s one login & password, but for multiple sites. The Drupal community is quickly growing, with over 1,000 registered sites.

What are some of its disadvantages?

Because Drupal has so many features, and different authors have different ideas on the best way to control them, administering Drupal can be a bear while you are figuring out where the control you want is. And 5 months from now, the next time you want that control, again it can be frustrating to know it’s there, but not sure how to get to it.

Currently there is no easy way to upload a file (image, pdf…) with a post; you need to get the file on the server (image module, file upload module) and then know how to make the link to it. This should be fixed in the upcoming version 4.5.

Testing servers for upgrades, new modules, or radical new templates can be a hassle with Drupal, since you have to remember a few places to change the name of the server and clear the cache.

What’s the killer feature, if there is one?

With Drupal, you can start small, but it’s very powerful, so that this one system can stay with you as you grow. Drupal is first a CMS, but also an easy blogging tool, once it’s set up. The killer feature is content management.

Any content (blog entry, book page, image, poll, story) can be marked as “Published” (visible), “in moderation” (ready to be published/approved by editor), “Promoted on front page” (advertised; a portion of the beginning of the content will be show on the front page), “Static on front page” (similar but highlighted at the top above simply promoted items), “Create new revision” (keep copy of present version, and old version possibly with a note on what you changed).

You can set up different user groups with different roles and abilities: some can blog, some can write drafts of stories, some can post stories, some can comment, some can moderate comments.

What features does it lack or need fixing?

By default, Drupal has no easy tagging or WYSIWYG features; they must be installed by module so you can tell they are an accessory, not part of the core of the system.

Where does the publishing engine reside? On its own hosted servers, like Blogger or TypePad? On your own web server, like Movable Type? On your desktop, like Userland Radio? Other? (Outerspace?) What advantages/disadvantages do you see in this approach?

The publishing engine requires your own web server, or you can opt for a commercial Drupal service provider. This means that you have to purchase a domain, get hosting services and then setup the CMS. This is a disadvantage in terms of initial costs, but in the long run will give you more control over your content.

What’s the geek factor on this? How comfortable can non-technical people be with it?

Cam (the geek) found installing Drupal and getting it running the first time pretty simple. Harold (not a geek) did not even try. The instructions are good. You have to be sure the .htaccess file is read and mod_rewrite can work so friendly urls can work. Getting the basic database definition loaded was fairly simple using PHPMyAdmin. More difficult is the administration since there are so many features, installing non-core modules that may need database tweaks, and upgrades if you want to have a testing server. It is less geeky that TikiWiki and differently geeky than Gallery.

Once the main system was setup, Harold has had no difficulties maintaining content, tweaking the system and modifying the layout.

What’s the learning curve? Totally intuitive? Lots of features, thus requiring more time to familiarize yourself with all of it?

As mentioned, the learning curve is not too steep. You can set up a basic installation, and let it run. Later, you can add features and functions. Our sites have been set up in the course of a week, with probably a total of 6 to 8 hours of work, but some of this is loading graphics and getting the right look and feel.

What’s involved in setting it up? If you’re not technical, do you need help?

If you don’t manage your own webserver already, then it is strongly suggested that you get help with the installation. This is not a “setup everything in five steps” installation. Once set up, you will need almost no support.

Like most every open source project, the manual is aiming at a moving target so it may be covering a feature in a previous version; they cleverly don’t have screen shots and they allow comments on the manual pages of the site, so users who can’t edit the body of the pages can make notes on them.

Are there platform restrictions? (E.g., PC/Mac, APS vs. Linux servers, SQL Server, etc.)

Drupal is PHP-based, and Linux is the suggested operating system. Our installations are running on a Mac G4 with no problems at all.

The main code works with most any SQL database, but if you add contributed modules you may be restricted (often just mySLQ sometimes PostgreSQL or Microsoft SQL Server as well); check the docs for the specific module. “Friendly URLs” (no “?” in the url; better for users and search engines) will require mod_rewrite. Because the software resides on a remote server, you will need to make sure the remote backups are happening (possibly simpler than backups on your desktop). You may want to make sure you have access to a database admin tool like PHPMyAdmin if you want to poke around at your database by hand.

Who produces it? Is it an open-source community, a labor-of-love by some programmer, a company with financial backing? What is the likelihood this development team is going to still be at it a year or two from now, providing new features, etc.?

Drupal has been around for three years and has a good developer community. Drupal should be around for years to come. They recently celebrated the 10,000th node (forum topics, project issues, book pages, images and stories) since April 2001; that’s a good measure of how robust the online community is, and there is also a very good dialog in the mailing lists for support, developers, and another noting CVS changes.

The download page at the Drupal site lists about 100 third party modules and about 10 third party templates available for the current version of drupal.

Where is the software developed? How is language support in English (the web site, the manual, the support communities, etc.)? Other languages?

Language support for many single languages per web site (English, or German, or French, or Russian) is supposed to be good and getting better. Drupal doesn’t have good support for bilingual sites, but we haven’t found anything else that does either. The main site, manual, and mailing lists are almost entirely English.

What’s the pricing of it?

Drupal is GPL’d [i.e., free under the General Public License] and works with Apache or IIS web servers, PHP (4), and an SQL database.

Is there tech support?

Tech support is available through the online forums. The support section of the website lists a fair number of people who can offer paid support, either helping you use or set up some feature module, or template, or people who will make you a module or template for a fee. We haven’t used any of this fee based support.

Is there a good user manual?

Like most every open source project the manual is aiming at a moving target so it may be covering a feature in a previous version; they cleverly don’t have screen shots and they allow comments on the manual pages of the site so users who can’t edit the body of the pages can make notes on them.

Is there support for photos galleries?

Yes, but there is no easy way to upload a file (image, pdf…) with a post; you need to get the file on the server (image module, file upload module) and then know how to make the link to it. This should be fixed in the upcoming version 4.5. Each user can have a personal photo gallery as well.

Is there a built-in Blogroll/Link List kind of feature to manage blogrolls?

There is no built-in blogroll feature, but some workarounds are available on the developer forum. Not easy at this time. Drupal allows posting by XML-RPC blog APIs.

Can you post via email? Mobile phone/moblog?

The Mailhandler module allows registered users to create or edit nodes and comments via email. Authentication is usually based on the From: email address. Users may post taxonomy terms, teasers, and other node parameters using the Commands capability. There is not much feedback to date on how well this works.

Does it email posts to subscribers who so choose?

Some administrators may want to download, install and configure. The notify module may be downloaded and installed separately. Users can then request that Drupal send them an e-mail when new comments are posted (the notify module requires that cron.php be configured properly). This has a high geek factor.

Anything notable in the archive features?

Archives as in show a calendar and click a date to see what was posted on that date is available. Archive as in rollback of page content is also available.

Does it support comments? Comment-spam filtering? If so (the latter), what’s the approach?

There is a comment system, you can set it up to accept comments from anyone, or just signed on users. If you allow everyone to comment, there is currently no specific comment spam filtering, but at the same time Drupal isn’t so popular that it has attracted anyone to write a tool to automate comment spamming in Drupal like they have in Movable type (yet).

As the admin, it is pretty easy to see all the new comments on your site and read them and possibly delete them; you don’t have to visit each page to check the comments manually. The admin can set the maximum number of posts per minute, to slow the automatic spammers. You can also force all commenters to preview before they post, another mechanism that will slow down spammers. See also a comment by Morbus Iff on spam filtering in Drupal.

Does it support trackback?

Trackbacks and pings are supported.

Any idea how well it works on a Mac, with Mozilla or other non-W2K IE platforms?

We have used Drupal with a Mac using Safari, Mozilla and IE; as well as a Windows PC using IE and Firefox. All work well.

Does it pioneer any other new blog features that other platforms don’t have?

Not that we know of. The login feature across distributed hosts may be something special.

Does it support multiple authors? If so, does it have decent permission controls? (E.g., can you limit authors to publish only to draft?)

Drupal supports multiple authors, but they each get a separate blog, so it won’t look like a group blog. There is a meta blog of all bloggers on a site. There is a wide range of permissions that the admin can control; this is more usually used for the content management sections of a drupal site, not the blog sections.

Does it support a simple modular design for page elements? (E.g., when editing templates, are things like blogroll lists, sidebar elements, headers, etc., managed as separate entities, or are they all just in the HTML of a single template?)

Drupal uses a modular architecture, so that individual features, like navigation blocks, can be globally changed. Installable modules (plug-ins) can allow features including image galleries, alternate text input styles (BBCode, Wiki, HTMLArea WYSIWYG formatter, Markdown with SmartyPants, Textile), Trackback, and lots of other things.

Is it well suited for public corporate blogging? Why or why not?

Drupal could work well for corporate blogging because it is easy to add bloggers to any installation. Every user gets a personal blog, as well as a personal image gallery. Its scalability would be well-suited to corporate blogging.

Is it well suited for internal corporate blogging? Why or why not?

Drupal could work just as well for internal blogging because there is only one database for the entire site. That way anyone can find information with a single search. The search feature is great, and a blog can be used as personal knowledge management system. Many of Harold’s consulting reports and analyses begin by searching previous posts on his blog.

What other blog platforms have you used that you can compare this to?

Cameron installed and used Drupal for four sites, and has used TikiWiki and Gallery for one site each. Cam has administered a Communigate web server, installed compiled and configured ht:dig for a few sites, used Webmin for Bind and Apache or bare httpd.conf config for over 100 domains. Harold has used Blogger and QuickTopic in the past. We find that Drupal is powerful and flexible, and plan on sticking with it.

Blogging is about the text and having a site that is friendly to users and Google so people can find you, and people will use you. Google quite likes our Drupal sites. For users finding things on the blog, using taxonomy links, links for navigation, or the search all work well.

What else do we need to know about this system?

Next Version 4.5.0 will probably be available Mid Sept 2004.

Multiple sites one installation. It is fairly simple to have multiple sites use one installation of Drupal. You will need to edit the Apache Config file to point multiple sites to the same file location on your server, and have multiple config files that tell which database to use based on which hostname is accessing the site. This allows me to have a directory on my server with 4.3.x installed with a couple of sites, and 4.4.x in it with a couple of sites. Upgrades at the last decimal point can usually be installed with no worries about feature changes so to upgrade all your 4.4.x sites from 4.4.2 to 4.4.3 just dump the new/changed 4.4.3 files in there and you have upgraded all the sites.

Upgrades in the middle decimal point usually have feature/database changes so just dumping the new files on working sites is not the way to go. Usually I duplicate the database, set up a new host (450.bales.ca for the upcoming 4.5.0) set up a config file pointing to the database duplicate, add the 3-4 additional modules I want run the upgrade script, test, configure new features and then once I’m happy make the new install respond to my regular hostname. Remembering to change the Drupal config file so the base url is www…, clearing the cache so you don’t have links to pages on 450…., updating the Apache config properly are a few of the gotchas. It might be simpler and safer to make sure you have a good backup of the database, and do away with the temporary hostname.

Books. You can set up different style sheets for Drupal to use when printing a page – when you choose print page Drupal will group all the sub pages in a ‘book’ for printing in the same print job. A great feature about books is the “Printer-friendly version”, which will take all of the sections and sub-sections of a book and place all of the text and images in order on a single web page. This makes the creation of a brochure from the web very simple.

Templates. We haven’t played with a lot of the template features with Drupal – basically we use one and edited the CSS to get some better colors. There is a group of people in the developer community very interested in the templating and there are 2-3 basic templating methods. The problem with templates is that there are no previews available, so you have to install them before you can see them.

Meta-tags. Drupal uses a meta-tagging system they call “Taxonomy” I’ve seen similar things in Movable Type. This allows hierarchical relationships between your meta tags. If you remember your biology courses you may remember organisms being sorted by Taxonomies. Using/administering/understanding this taxonomy system causes quite a few headaches for new Drupal users.

Here is part of the Taxonomy I use to tag articles on my site:
none
Canada
-New Brunswick
–Sackville
—Sackville Town Council
-Nova Scotia
–Amherst
–Halifax
Coming Apocalypse
Technology
-Computer
–Linux
–Macintosh
–Windows
-DVD

By tagging an entry to be on the topic of “Coming Apocalypse” a link appears on the page allowing users to see all the items in that category.

Drupal links:

• Main Site
• About Drupal
• Features
• Sample sites
• Screen Shots
• Support
• Mailing Lists
• Documentation – online
• Documentation – formatted for printing
• Online forums
• Downloads: main system, contributed modules, and themes

UPDATE:
I posed some new questions, which Harold and Cameron graciously answered:

Does it let you publish in XML syndication? If so, in which formats? RSS 1.0? RSS 2.0? Atom? Others?

XML publication – RSS by default (rss version=”0.92″) Atom by plugin module. (We may already have answered this)

Does it have a spell checker?

Yes by plugin module, requires installation of aspell or ispell.

Does it have a wiki-publishing component?

There is a wiki module but as far as I can tell it is for formatting your posts (IE similar to Textile or Markdown) not really for wiki free flow page creation or permissions. Of course page creation isn’t very difficult and you can set up your permissions to be similar to many wikis. There may be many Drupal sites with Wikis

Can you easily set up multiple weblogs from one account or instalation of the blog publishing software, or must you create multiple accounts or installations?

(also probably already answered)

One Install of Drupal can fairly easily support multiple hosts with different content, and a single host can have multiple accounts all with their own Blog.

Does it support categories? If so, how about hiearchical categories (e.g., Movies / Horror, Movies / Comedies, Movies / Thriller, Books / Fiction, Books / Biographies, and so on)? What about surpressed categories? (That is, in the monthly archive, publish all except the “Breaking News” category)?

Yes (answered in the last catch all section under Taxonomy) Unsure about the surpressed categories.

My favorite new artist/blogger.

Link

Seemingly just for the hell of it, Jonathan Hernandez has created a free blog publishing utility (see headline link) that publishes a blog via Google’s new email application Gmail. Here’s the proof-of-concept blog.

More evidence that nerds need to get out more often. I think I’ll wait to see whether it catches on before I commission a review.

Link

Keeping the pace of these blog platform reviews hopping, here’s the next one about GreyMatter by Joni M. Mueller. I have to say, the review itself is great, very well-written, thorough and honest. Honest to the extent that, althought Joni obviously loves the platform, she admits it may not be for everyone.

My summary of the review: It’s a server-side, PERL-based platform, like Movable Type, which means, among other things, it requires rebuilds of the archives when you make significant changes to the templates. Joni tells how this process early on crashed her then mom-and-pop web host’s servers and she was polited asked to take her web site elsewhere. (Bad blogger! Yikes!) Also, GreyMatter is no longer being actively developed by its principal developer, although there remains an active, die-hard community of plug-in and hack makers. It is also not so easy to install for novices. For those reasons, Joni suggests it’s better for those who like playing around with the underside of the tools and maybe not ideal for most corporate blog installations.

Read her whole review for yourself below. Please offer your feedback on both the review and especially the platform in the Comments thread.

GreyMatter Review

by Joni M. Mueller

General performance. What makes this different/better than other blog publishing platforms?

GreyMatter was one of the first Perl-driven blogging tools out there. That was back when the choices were Livejournal, Blogger and GreyMatter. The difference with GreyMatter was of course its power. At that time, it offered things that the other blog tools did not. GM was written and developed by Noah Grey.

What are some of the best advantages about this platform?

It offers powerful blogging tools like a calendar, searching, comments, IP banning and karma voting, something even today seldom offered in any other blogging tool. Most people probably would never use the karma voting feature of GM, but it might come in handy for a review site (books, DVDs, software, etc.).

One of GM’s best features is its ability to be completely customized. There are a dazzling, if not daunting, array of templates with which to tweak and customize your layout.

What are some of its disadvantages?

Because it is based on Perl, not PHP, the rebuilds that plague other Perl-driven sites also plagues GM. And if your site is hosted on a small server (as mine was way back when), you may end up crashing your web host’s servers. This is not likely to endear you to them, nor GreyMatter to you.

Another disadvantage GreyMatter has is that you have to know your way around an Unix server pretty well and understand completely the difference between an URL and a server path to install GreyMatter. Either that or know someone who does. The installation of GreyMatter is not for the novice.

Also, because GreyMatter is no longer being actively developed by its creator, it will likely stall out at its current version, 1.3. However, there’s a close-knit community of GreyMatter enthusiasts who have taken up the torch and offer a robust and active support forum, where new plugins and hacks are being engineered constantly. GreyMatter is no longer in the forefront of the blogging world, if it ever was, but it’s keeping stride with its bigger competitors and has a very loyal fan base.

What’s the killer feature, if there is one?

There are two features that I think have the “wow” factor above all other blogging tools:

1. As mentioned before, its karma voting feature.
2. GM creates a log, as does MovableType, of all the activity on your site. But unlike MovableType, GreyMatter alerts you to any hacking attempts that occurred and provides the hacker’s ISP. (See Fig. 1)

Fig. 1

What features does it lack or need fixing?

Streamlining the cumbersome installation process would be a plus. There was a very big security issue about a year ago for those running GreyMatter in conjunction with PHP. But the flaw was isolated and patched and it’s just as safe as any other Perl program now.

Where does the publishing engine reside? On its own hosted servers, like Blogger or TypePad? On your own web server, like Movable Type? On your desktop, like Userland Radio? Other? (Outerspace?) What advantages/disadvantages do you see in this approach?

GreyMatter is very much like MovableType in that it must reside on its own server. As mentioned before, you must have a robust web host. When I first installed GreyMatter, my site was hosted by a local ISP, a true “mom and pop” operation. In no short order, GreyMatter apparently ran amok on a rebuild and the ISP operator had to shut the servers down for several hours while he found the offending program (GreyMatter). I was asked, albeit nicely, to find another server from which to run GreyMatter. I am happy to say there are many web hosts out there who can handle GreyMatter and the strain it can sometimes place on a server. There are many, though, who have taken the stance that it is a hoggy program and will not allow it on their servers.

What’s the geek factor on this? How comfortable can non-technical people be with it?

On a scale of 1-10, 10 being the Geekiest of Geeks, I rate GreyMatter a 7 on the difficulty level. There is difficulty in its installation, and further difficulty if you are an HTML novice in dealing with its vast array of templates. Once you’ve mastered both, however, you will find GreyMatter very powerful.

What’s the learning curve? Totally intuitive? Lots of features, thus requiring more time to familiarize yourself with all of it?

The learning curve is a bit steep, but the rewards are worth it in terms of having the ability to create your layout exactly as you want it. Spend a bit of time getting to know GreyMatter’s templates and how they work. The documentation is very informative and easy to understand. It reviews all the tags and their possible uses so you get a good understanding of what you need to set up to get your blog up and running, while you work behind the scenes on the layout.

What’s involved in setting it up? If you’re not technical, do you need help?

While the installation can be troublesome, GreyMatter does have a diagnostic utility that checks to be sure you’ve made your files and directories writable, so if you haven’t it will be easy to go back and fix them so they are. The setup instructions walk you through configuring a hypothetical site so you aren’t left completely in the dark about how to set up GreyMatter. But someone who’s never messed around with FTP and CHMOD or used Tel-Net or the Unix shell commands is going to need to go through some trial (and error) by fire!

Are there platform restrictions? (E.g., PC/Mac, APS vs. Linux servers, SQL Server, etc.)

There aren’t any restrictions that I’m aware of, but you must have a minimum of Perl and access to your cgi-bin folder to install GreyMatter.

Who produces it? Is it an open-source community, a labor-of-love by some programmer, a company with financial backing? What is the likelihood this development team is going to still be at it a year or two from now, providing new features, etc.?

GreyMatter was created and developed by Noah Grey, a photographer. He continued development and support for GreyMatter until around 2002 or early 2003, when he announced that he would no longer be developing it. Then, support for GreyMatter through its forum was taken over by FoshDawg, who maintains the forums and keeps track of the various hacks and mods that continue to be written for GreyMatter as of this writing!

Where is the software developed? How is language support in English (the web site, the manual, the support communities, etc.)? Other languages?

Other languages are supported through mods/hacks found here.

What’s the pricing of it?

GreyMatter is free (although it is not open source), and there are no licensing fees for personal or commercial use.

Is there tech support?

Yes, through the GreyMatter support forum.

Is there a good user manual?

There is an excellent online installation and user manual that ships with GreyMatter. It is very detailed and walks you through the installation and configuration of GreyMatter. It can be viewed here.

Is there a third-party developer community? If so, how active?

GreyMatter has a loyal following and many people are actively developing plugins and hacks for GreyMatter at FoshDawg.net/gm/mods/ and at the Flipped Cracker site, FlippedCracker.net/gm/.

Is there a vibrant user/support/forum community? If so, what are the URLs of such?

Yes, indeed. Since Noah Grey no longer develops GreyMatter, it has been “adopted” by FoshDawg, and its support forum is at GreyMatterForums.com.

Is there support for photos galleries?

GreyMatter natively supports uploading of images and because of its large assortment of customizable templates, it is well-suited to a photoblog, but not “straight out of the box.” Here’s a tutorial on creating a photoblog with GreyMatter.

Is there a built-in Blogroll/Link List kind of feature to manage blogrolls?

Unfortunately, no. However, most people are familiar with and use Blogrolling.com, which a user is certainly free to incorporate into his or her GreyMatter blog.

Can you post via email? Mobile phone/moblog?

Yes, you can post via e-mail only through a hack/plugin found here.

Does it email posts to subscribers who so choose?

Yes, through another hack/plugin found here.

Anything notable in the archive features?

Because of GreyMatter’s array of templates, it’s possible to completely separate your main entries’ style from that of your archives.

Does it support comments? Comment-spam filtering? If so (the latter), what’s the approach?

Comments are natively supported in GreyMatter. It also has a mod/hack that verifies that the commenter’s email address is valid. That can be found here.

Does it support trackback?

Through a plugin, trackbacks and RSS feeds are now supported. One such hack can be found here.

Any idea how well it works on a Mac, with Mozilla or other non-W2K IE platforms?

I have no way to test it on a Mac, but I know that it (the GM control panel; I have no control over your GM-powered website!) renders fine on all the Gecko browsers, in Opera 6 and 7, in Avant and IE6.

Does it pioneer any other new blog features that other platforms don’t have?

GreyMatter is no longer being actively developed, but new plugins and “hacks” are being written for it constantly. Most of these are simply features that allow GreyMatter to keep step with the rest of the blog tools out there, so it’s not breaking any new ground right now.

One plugin/mod/hack that I think is worth having is the spellcheck hack.

Does it support multiple authors? If so, does it have decent permission controls? (E.g., can you limit authors to publish only to draft?)

GreyMatter supports an unlimited number of authors and you can restrict them through the control panel. (See Fig. 2)

Fig. 2

GreyMatter doesn’t have a “draft” setting per se. But it has a unique feature where you can open or close an entry. This causes it not to be shown on your site. And if you decide you want to reopen the entry, you can do so at the click of a button. (See Fig. 3)

Fig. 3

Also, not asked, but worth mentioning is that if you want more than one GM blog on your server, you must install each separately. And there’s no “miniblog” or other way (other than through complicated PHP calls) to run both blogs on one page.

Does it support a simple modular design for page elements? (E.g., when editing templates, are things like blogroll lists, sidebar elements, headers, etc., managed as separate entities, or are they all just in the HTML of a single template?)

Yes, it does. It has separate sections for a “header” and a “footer” so that constant information (such as copyright and colophon information, often contained in a footer) can be written once and called by any page in the GreyMatter template scheme.

Is it well suited for public corporate blogging? Why or why not?

I wouldn’t recommend it over MovableType or WordPress for several reasons. One, because it’s not supported any longer; two, because any PHP-based program (e.g., WordPress, pMachine) will place less load on one’s server and is leaner; and third, and most important, the learning curve on a program like this is fairly steep. You’d need one or two people in the company who are well-versed to set up the journal for all the other users. With other journaling programs being so much more popular and more widely supported, it’s just not something I’d offer as a choice.

Is it well suited for internal corporate blogging? Why or why not?

See above

What other blog platforms have you used that you can compare this to?

I started out using Blogger, then found GreyMatter and was intrigued by its karma voting, calendar and search box. Its closest competitor is MovableType*, as they are both Perl-based programs.

I’ve also dabbled a bit in pMachine*, Geeklog, Mambo*, e107, PHPwcms, TextPattern*, and WordPress*.

*Denotes active testbed site and extensive use.

What else do we need to know about this system?

When it first arrived on the scene, it was an elegant program for those who wanted to roll up their sleeves and dive into the backend of a journaling program. With the advent of Blogger, and the growing popularity of blogs in general, people started wanting something that needed less know-how to get off the ground. MovableType seemed to strike a happy medium between geekishness and wham-bam click and go blogging. It still does, but since that time, there’ve been many more programs flocking to fill in any gaps. For the longest time, it seemed that GM and MT were in a dead heat. Perhaps had Noah Grey continued a more active role in GM, it may be in a different place today, but I could sit around and speculate all day. In sum, GreyMatter is a great program, if you are willing to hunt down the mods and hacks for it. If you like complete control over every single detail and every single piece of output of your blog program, GreyMatter still has that thrill factor.

UPDATE:
I asked the author to add in a few other questions, which she graciously did:

Does it have a spell checker?

Not natively, but you can via a plugin.

Does it have a wiki-publishing component?

No.

Can you easily set up multiple weblogs from one account or installation of the blog publishing software, or must you create multiple accounts or installations?

You must install separate instances of GreyMatter in your cgi-bin folder if you want multiple blogs running GreyMatter on the same server. Also, there is no way to call one GM blog from within another so you can’t have a sideblog or miniblog.

Does it support categories? If so, how about hierarchical categories (e.g., Movies/Horror, Movies/Comedies, Movies/Thriller, Books/Fiction, Books/Biographies, and so on)? What about suppressed categories? (That is, in the monthly archive, publish all except the “Breaking News” category)?

GreyMatter does not natively support categories, but does so only through a plugin. Caveats abound with this plugin as it apparently alters GreyMatter’s underpinnings quite a bit.

Does it let you easily create a “remaindered links” blog-within-a-blog, a la Anil Dash’s Links Blog? (Obviously, you can kludge this in most systems, but I’m wondering if some blog software has it off the shelf.)

No, and there doesn’t appear to be a plugin, mod or hack that will accomplish this either.

A couple of weeks ago, I put out a call for reviews of blog publishing platforms. I got a number of offers to review platforms, and several are now in the works. Strikingly, I got more offers to review WordPress than any other platform, by a wide margin (I did, however, note that I didn’t need reviews of the popular platforms Movable Type, TypePad and Blogger, as I will write those myself).

Anyway, I’m pleased to hereby present the first review about WordPress by by Jeremy C. Wright of Ensight.org. Since I am not familiar with this platform personally (or any of the others I solicited reviews for) and the reviewers who volunteered are obviously fans of their respective platforms, I would love to hear from the rest of you in the Comments thread on this post as to what you think of the review and, more importantly, the platform in question.

UPDATE:
On the recommendation of an off-site commenter, I think it’s probably appropriate for me to give my summary of what I took away from each of these reviews, so here’s what I’d say for WordPress: Overall, Jeremy is quite enthused about it. It’s PHP, which means it generates pages dynamically and doesn’t need to rebuild the whole archive the way Movable Type and other PERL-based platforms do. It’s open-source and free and has an active developer and forum community; based on number of offers I had to review this platform, I’d say it’s got a lot of interest and momentum behind it. While you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to set it up, it is not a piece of cake, either. Jeremy says that may inhibit its ideal use for internal corporate (“intranet”) blogging, as it would probably require someone from IT to set up every new installation, as opposed to being something folks in any department could do themselves. Overall, though, he gives it high marks.

Oh, also, I actually had Jeremy rewrite the review, because his first draft didn’t conform to my question-and-answer format, which he graciously did. Here, for the record, is his original version of the review. The revised version is below here on my blog.

WordPress Review

by Jeremy C. Wright of Ensight.org

There are, quite literally, hundreds of blogging platforms and packages out there. Choosing the right one for you can be such a daunting task that most people simply pick what is most well known, without necessarily picking based on quality of the software or even longevity of the platform.

Thankfully, WordPress is both well known and deserving of its status as the most popular PHP-based blogging platform available.

General performance: What makes this different/better than other blog publishing platforms?

WordPress is fast, has a quick installation, low learning curve and yet is incredibly powerful. It includes a robust plugin system, a full comments system and blogrolling and linkblogs as part of the software. In addition, it includes mobile features like Blogging by Email and Bookmarklets that let you blog any page you are on quickly and easily.

The WordPress community is large and vibrant and the developers are top notch. And, to top it all off, WordPress is free.

What are some of the best advantages about this platform?

Ultimately the choice of blogging software will always come down to a few fundamental questions: Are you looking for a hosted solution? Are you looking for a PHP or Perl-based product (or some other platform specifically, like ASP.NET)? What other features are looking for (comment spam protection, multiple authors, multiple blogs, photo gallery, etc)?

WordPress is designed for those who are not looking for a hosted solution, who are looking for a PHP based solution and who want certain well architected, yet foundational features: standards compliance, dynamic templates, a fully fledged comment system (including anti-spam protection), ease of plugin installation and more. If these are the types of things that are important to you, WordPress may just be the perfect fit.

Finally, the developers are going to stick around. They’ve been doing blogging software since 2001 and are a large part of the blogging community and have been able to create a fantastic product used by thousands upon thousands of bloggers.

What are some of its disadvantages?

There a few smaller features WordPress lacks. Mainly it isn’t that WordPress lacks features, but that certain feature sets are weaker than they need to be. For instance it is difficult to moderate what authors are able to publish and the comment spam protection system is weak and difficult to maintain.

What’s the killer feature, if there is one?

WordPress’s feature which puts it above many other platforms is it’s templating system. Essentially, there is one core template, contained in the index.php file. Every page takes its design from that main one. That doesn’t mean every page needs to look the same.

Each element of the template is modular. So, in order to remove the calendar, you simply remove the <?php get_calendar(); ?> code from your index.php file. Ditto with monthly archives (<?php wp_get_archives(‘type=monthly’); ?>). Keeping the design modular allows for a very flexible presentation layer.

What features does it lack or need fixing?

WordPress’s comment spam protection features definitely need to be looked at. Recently, comment spam overtook email spam as the most intrusive form of advertising for users to have to deal with. Many blogs get hundreds of comment spam attempts per day, and WordPress’s system of having the author moderate each individual comment is far too cumbersome.

In addition, WordPress lacks the ability to have static archives, which are important for larger sites with many older entries both for backups and to decrease server load.

Where does the publishing engine reside? On its own hosted servers, like Blogger or TypePad? On your own web server, like Movable Type? On your desktop, like Userland Radio? Other? (Outerspace?) What advantages/disadvantages do you see in this approach?

The publishing engine resides on your own web server, like MovableType. If you already have your own web server or are using space provided by a shared hosting provider, WordPress will be ideal for your situation. However if you aren’t, the setup and installation of a WordPress blog will require you to purchase a domain, sign up for hosting and then setup the publishing engine.

However, having the software be your own allows for a much greater level of control and flexibility as you can modify the software as you see fit.

What’s the geek factor on this? How comfortable can non-technical people be with it?

Assuming a non-technical person is able to do the initial setup in terms of database details, actually using WordPress is very easy. The documentation is clear and concise and the interface is very easy to work with as it is broken into tasks: Write, Edit, Options, etc.

This means that just about anyone can log into the Control Panel and get to writing very quickly.

What’s the learning curve? Totally intuitive? Lots of features, thus requiring more time to familiarize yourself with all of it?

WordPress’s learning curve is only as steep as you need it to be. While there are lots of features and there is a lot of depth, someone can get started as simply as logging in and writing. They don’t need to setup categories if they don’t want to. They don’t need to do anything besides write, if that is all they need to do.

However there are a lot of options for permanent links for your entries to how articles are read and how dates are displayed through to link blogs and blogrolls. All in all it is simple enough to learn, but deep enough to keep using even for the most advanced user.

What’s involved in setting it up? If you’re not technical, do you need help?

WordPress bills itself as having the simplest installation on the planet: The 5-Minute Installation. To be honest, I’ve found it generally takes me 7 minutes, but then I can be kind of slow. Either way, here is the entirety of the installation instructions:

1. Make sure your host meets the requirements. Also, have a database ready with proper username and password.
2. Unzip the package you downloaded.
3. Open up wp-config-sample.php and fill in your database details. Save and rename the file to wp-config.php.
4. Upload all the files to your webhost
5. Run the installation file. Relative to where you uploaded the files, it’ll be in wp-admin/install.php.

Yep. That’s it. 5 steps.

Beyond that, you will need to login to WordPress, change your password and get acclimatized to the environment. However, the WordPress introduction and wiki provide a lot of help in this area.

In addition, if you are stuck, the WordPress Support Forums are always buzzing. If you need a hand, that’s often the best place to look. As a suggestion, though, you may want to try the Search feature before you post your question as it’s likely that any installation issue you are running into has been encountered, and solved before.

Ultimately WordPress is designed to be simple enough for the casual blogger, but to have the flexibility even the most experienced blogger would need.

Are there platform restrictions? (E.g., PC/Mac, APS vs. Linux servers, SQL Server, etc.)

The only requirements for WordPress are that PHP v4.1 or later be installed and that MySQL v3.23.23 be installed on whatever server you are running. The actual OS can be Windows, Linux or Mac as long as the database and scripting language are present.

Who produces it? Is it an open-source community, a labor-of-love by some programmer, a company with financial backing? What is the likelihood this development team is going to still be at it a year or two from now, providing new features, etc.?

WordPress is an open-source labor-of-love by a large team of programmers and a vibrant support community of thousands of users who love to help out and welcome new bloggers to their community. The development team has been doing blogging software since 2001 and has no plans to stop. They love the medium, love the community and have great plans for the future.

Where is the software developed? How is language support in English (the web site, the manual, the support communities, etc.)? Other languages?

The software is developed largely in Canada and the US. It supports mainly English, though there is documentation and plugins available to transform WordPress’s language into some other ones like French or German.

What’s the pricing of it?

WordPress is completely free under the GPL license.

Is there tech support?

There is support through the WordPress Support Forums and through the WordPress Wiki and Documentation. The primary means of support, though, is the Support Forums.

Is there a good user manual?

Yes. The user manual is available on the website at the Documentation homepage.

Is there a third-party developer community? If so, how active?

There is an active developer community releasing a myriad of plugins (more than 100) and hacks (more than 200). Also, users are able to request help instituting new plugins and hacks (hacks are where code changes to WordPress are necessary to enable functionality).

Is there support for photos galleries?

There are currently several plugins which enable this functionality, though it is not part of the core build.

Is there a built-in Blogroll/Link List kind of feature to manage blogrolls?

Yes, there is advanced functionality for Blogrolls and Linklists.

Can you post via email? Mobile phone/moblog?

There is Blog by Email functionality built into WordPress, and there are moblog plugins available as well.

Does it email posts to subscribers who so choose?

WordPress does not notify subscribers by default when new posts are posted; however, there are [XML] feeds that users can subscribe to in their Feed Reader of choice, and there are plugins to allow users to subscribe to new posts, if the blog author so desires.

Anything notable in the archive features?

WordPress provides very advanced Archive Customization and Archive Rewrite functionality.

Archive Customization:

Your archive URL’s can be fully customized. In fact, the options are sometimes quite staggering. Any combination of categories, authors, post ID’s and date parts (year, month, day, date, minute and second). For example, an Archive Format of:

/archives/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

would give you a URL of

/archives/2003/05/23/my-cheese-sandwich/

Archive Rewrites:

In addition, once you have figured out how you want your archives to look, WordPress gives you all of the .htaccess configuration information you will need (if your host supports it), so that your URL’s will appear to be real files, which means search engines will index them more quickly and effectively.

Does it support comments? Comment-spam filtering? If so (the latter), what’s the approach?

One of WordPress’s weak areas is the area of comment spam. While the Comment system itself is very capable and fully fledged (a full members system, users can subscribe to a comment feed or get notification of new comments through a plugin), the comment spam protection is very basic.

WordPress’s anti-spam system is based primarily on a Moderation Queue. This moderation queue is designed so that any comment which doesn’t match the criteria you specify doesn’t get shown until you approve it. You can choose to either approve every comment, or allow comments through as long as they contain a name and email address and don’t match a word in your Blacklist. In addition, if a comment contains more than a specified number of links it can be placed automatically in the queue (as spam often contains more than 5 links).

The issues with this system are twofold. First, there is no large, central list of words spammers are using like there is with MT-Blacklist. Second, because every comment goes into a queue, you do need to “manually” delete all of the comments in the queue.

That said, there are a couple of hacks and plugins to make life easier including WP-Blacklist (an attempt at duplicating the MT-Blacklist functionality for WordPress) and some easier comment spam moderation techniques. However there isn’t yet a single technique, like MovableType’s MT-Blacklist which is both overwhelmingly effective and incredibly popular, though several people are making inroads.

Does it support trackback?

The WordPress developers are committed to standards in all their forms, from the W3C‘s markup requirements to Trackback and Pingback.

Any idea how well it works on a Mac, with Mozilla or other non-W2K IE platforms?

Because WordPress is web-based, the choice of platform is up to the blog author.

Does it pioneer any other new blog features that other platforms don’t have?

Beyond all else, WordPress pushes “simplicity”. By now most blogging platforms are copying one another’s features, but the simplicity of personal publishing on WordPress is still very hard to beat. Certain platforms like Blogger and TypePad are definitely up there, and WordPress stands tall right along with them in terms of ease of writing, publishing and maintaining a blog of any size.

Does it support multiple authors? If so, does it have decent permission controls? (E.g., can you limit authors to publish only to draft?)

WordPress is built around the concept of multiple authors. While it does only allow one blog (technically) it is geared towards unlimited authors in unlimited categories, which is always a nice thing.

Does it support a simple modular design for page elements? (E.g., when editing templates, are things like blogroll lists, sidebar elements, headers, etc., managed as separate entities, or are they all just in the HTML of a single template?)

WordPress’s design is entirely modular, and can easily be extended because it is PHP-based. Currently only the WordPress elements (calendar, link lists, etc) are modularized; creating other modular elements, however, is quick and easy.

Is it well suited for public corporate blogging? Why or why not?

While WordPress’s suitability for corporate blogging will vary depending on a given company’s requirements, there are a few features which I believe it is lacking, based on my experience with corporate blogging:

1. Individual categories or subsets of content cannot be locked away from certain readers (without hacking the system, which is quite possible since you could ensure that only users of a specific Privilege level saw certain content)
2. Users cannot be forced to save every entry in Draft format for later approval by an editor or manager
3. There are no built-in metrics to gauge how effective the blogging platform is being for the company

However, that isn’t to say WordPress isn’t appropriate. Because it is such an open platform and is so easy to use, it is entirely possible companies may try it and find out that it fits perfectly, with some minor modifications (which are easy, given WordPress’s open architecture).

Is it well suited for internal corporate blogging? Why or why not?

WordPress’s ability to meet a corporation’s internal needs will vary. However, because it is difficult to setup new blogs on an ongoing basis (unlike other systems you cannot simply point and click to create new blogs), it may not be the most appropriate solution for internal blogging.

What other blog platforms have you used that you can compare this to?

The first piece of blogging software I started using was b2, nearly two years ago. I spent three months with that blog and that blogging software before I burnt out. The reasons aren’t important, but basically boiled down to not properly defining the scope of my blog. The software was fairly difficult to work with, but was very easy to customize.

I knew that for my next blogging foray I wanted something more powerful. So, when I started Ensight, along with a group of friends, we decided to go with MovableType. It was easy to setup, had a large community and had a powerful templating component (at least, coming from b2 it did).

In addition, I’ve used a dozen more platforms (Drupal, Blogger, etc.) when guest blogging or helping others troubleshoot issues with their blogs. While I don’t necessarily consider myself an expert on every blogging platform, I am just about as much of a blogger as you can get, for good or for bad.

What else do we need to know about this system?

Some of WordPress’s other key features include:

Standards Oriented: The WordPress developers are committed to standards in all their forms, from the W3C’s (http://w3.org/) markup requirements to Trackback and Pingback. In addition, the WordPress developers have chosen to develop common API’s and an easy to use plugin architecture to allow others to work closely with the software without having to jump through any needless hoops.

Dynamic templates: I touched on this earlier. Essentially, having a dynamic templating system means that when you hit “save” on your blog post, it is live. When you make a change to the core templates driving your blog, it is live. No waiting around. No fussing. And definitely not mussing. Mussing is such a pain, and the WordPress developers have definitely made the templating system muss free.

Easy Importing: One of the biggest reasons for WordPress’s growth, besides WordPress itself, is that the development team have created importers for every major blogging platform out there, including Movable Type, Textpattern, Greymatter, Blogger, b2 and many others. If you are using a different platform, chances are someone from the community has either written an importer or they may even help write one for you.

In addition, the Plugin architecture is fantastic.

WordPress’s plugin system is incredibly simple: upload the plugin, login to your WordPress Control Panel, Navigate to the Plugins section and click Activate for the plugin you have just uploaded. Done. And if it doesn’t work as you’d hope, deactivate it.

If the plugin is for design changes, you may need to add a line of modular text (like the Calendar module I showed you in the Templates section), but for all other plugins, code changes are kept to an absolute minimum (which generally means you don’t have to do anything but Upload and Activate).
How many Plugins are there, and how do you find them? Your first stop should always be the Plugin page at the WordPress Wiki. It contains a list of more than a hundred plugins ranging from Per-Post Styles to the popular Auto Shutoff Comments Plugin. There are also plugins for photo galleries and a whole suite of other nifty blog tools.

If these aren’t enough, there are also “pure code” plugins, known in the WordPress community as Hacks. These will range from the mundane to the…odd (World Kit comes to mind).

What’s the Verdict?

Obviously I’m biased. I chose WordPress and I feel like I would never look back. While I’ve had issues, the amazing developers and fantastic support community have always been there to help me when I’ve needed it. For me, that has been extremely important. I never expect software to be perfect, but when the community helps me get it as close to perfect as I need it to be, that to me is a good sign.
Again, WordPress is open, flexible, dynamic and completely customizable. The template, posting, plugin and link management systems are world class. With some slight polishing of user permissions and comment spam blocking, WordPress could easily become the choice of just about every blogger out there. If these are the kinds of things you are looking for, WordPress is definitely for you.

UPDATE:
I asked the author to update this review with a few additional questions, which he graciously did:

Does it have a spell checker?

WordPress does not have a spellchecker as part of the software, however there are 2 spellcheck plugins that I am aware of, though I haven’t used either one.

Does it have a wiki-publishing component?

WordPress does not have a Wiki component.

Can you easily set up multiple weblogs from one account or instalation of the blog publishing software, or must you create multiple accounts or installations?

No, WordPress is currently a single-blog platform. There are several ways to get multiple blogs together on one blog site, however they require independent installations of WordPress.

Does it support categories? If so, how about hiearchical categories (e.g., Movies / Horror, Movies / Comedies, Movies / Thriller, Books / Fiction, Books / Biographies, and so on)? What about surpressed categories? (That is, in the monthly archive, publish all except the “Breaking News” category)?

WordPress supports categories, category descriptions and nested categories. I have tested it to 5 levels of depth, though I’m sure it goes much deeper than that. WordPress does not support the suppressing of categories, though there are several hacks and plugins that do accomplish this functionality.

Does it let you easily create a “remaindered links” blog-within-a-blog, a la Anil Dash’s Links Blog? (Obviously, you can kludge this in most systems, but I’m wondering if some blog software has it off the shelf.)

WordPress does not currently support a format like Link Blogs, however it does allow for the easy addition of links to the Link Management system. This feature is “kludgeable” by installing a separate version of WordPress or through several hacks and plugins.

This is a great one for the perennial question of how to make money off of blogs. Rather, actually, it’s an example of how a site with a solid revenue model already — e-commerce — can use blogs to make even more money. (NOTE: this case study from MarketingSherpa will be availabe for free for only a couple of weeks.)

The case study tells of how T-shirtKing.com increased its sales dramatically using a blog. The site was in the habit of writing long essays about the subjects of its t-shirts — for example, biographies on Miles Davis and Albert Einstein — for its email newsletter, which were quite popular with subscribers, but anti-spam filters were taking a toll on the effectiveness of its email program. So, using Movable Type, the site redesigned its site to publish via a blog, and added a blog to its content mix, publishing the essays in that format. The essays and the blog publishing platform worked well to drive more organic search traffic, and played into the site’s affiliate program as well. The results, according to MarketingSherpa, were dramatic:

Site sales tripled during 2003, and have continued strong in 2004. Altogether, blog content helps to bring in about 35% of total site sales — 10% from the email newsletter, 20% from affiliates who often reuse the content, and 5% from Blog traffic itself.
Blog readers are among the traffic most likely to convert to buyers. “Six to eight percent of Blog readers buy something. Once someone finds a Blog entry and reads the whole thing, they are about as qualified as you can get.”

MarketingSherpa: How to Build Your eRetail Business with a Blog (6-8% of Readers Convert to Buyers)

A blog for CEOs who blog. Why? Because they can.

Link

Gerrit Zalm

The Dutch Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Gerrit Zalm blogs. Needless to say, it’s in Dutch.

via Nevon

Link

Brilliant post by Maciej Ceglowski skewering audio posts for being pointlessly self-indulgent and missing most of what is great about both blogging and the Net in general. I agree with everything he says except that what makes his post so powerful is indeed that it is a very effective audio post. A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. I think the lesson is actually that, used judicioiusly, audio and video posts can indeed be effective, but only when they accomplish something that a normal text post cannot.

IdleWords.com: An Audioblogging Manifesto

Tom Humphrey, Nashville bureau chief for the Knoxville News Sentinel, is fumbling to get the hang of blogging at the Republican convention. Greg Brooks offers him some pointers, namely about the power of “decentralized editing” (my term). Amusing.

UPDATE:
James Lileks rips into this to hilarious effect (scroll past the stuff about Rudy G till after the pic of John McCain and Don Rickles).

It’s interesting for several reasons: 1. the site is described as a “web-only blog,” which of course makes it distinctive from blogs disseminated by carrier pigeon or smoke signals. 2. we learn that the bureau chief for a major newspaper has trouble writing clearly.

He goes on to mock the post sentence by sentence.

Greg Brooks: The Media Don’t Get It, Part MCMXXXII

Paul Chaney at Radiant Marketing suggests it’s time to retire the word “blog.” In his comments field I suggest “blog” isn’t so bad, or anyway “weblog” isn’t, and I also say that based on my PR background it’s too late to try to rebrand it anyway. Interesting reading, anyway.

Radiant Marketing: A Blog By Any Other Name