CMS/Blogging Platform…">Choosing a CMS/Blogging Platform…

• Posted: February 4, 2008
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• Author: Christina
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• Filed under: software
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• Tags: blogging tools, cms, drupal, head-to-head, joomla, movable type, software

I'm working on a more thorough analysis for Download Squad, but after reading Linda's comment, I thought now might be a good time to share some of my own evaluations/thoughts on the different blogging platforms/Content Management Systems...

OK, this is where I kind of write a bit of a mea-culpa for last night’s bitch­fest. See, for 6 and a half years or so, I kept a per­sonal journal/blog on Live­Jour­nal¹ and though I even­tu­ally did start treat­ing it like a more tra­di­tional “blog” in the post-2003 sense of the word (com­ment­ing on arti­cles, news events, and other exter­nal com­men­tary), it was often used as an out­let for me to vent some of my frus­tra­tions, griev­ances and other stream-of-conscious writing.

What I hadn’t really taken into account, until I saw Linda’s com­ment, was that stuff that I write as merely an exer­cise in vent­ing my frus­tra­tion, can poten­tially impact how peo­ple per­ceive a product/tool. Whoops. I’ll try to clearly mark that kind of stuff in the future. I don’t intend to use this site/blog the same way I used my jour­nal all those years, but I also don’t intend to stop writ­ing about the more mun­dane blatherings/bitchings.

I’m work­ing on a more thor­ough analy­sis for Down­load Squad, but after read­ing Linda’s com­ment, I thought now might be a good time to share some of my own evaluations/thoughts on the dif­fer­ent blog­ging platforms/Content Man­age­ment Sys­tems. Aside from actu­ally kick­ing myself in the ass enough to do it, choos­ing a blog­ging plat­form was as much of a road­block for me to start this site as find­ing a good design. In fact, I’d say those two things were the two ele­ments I let allow me to put off start­ing this pseudo-professional space for as long as I have.

Every six or seven months for the past cou­ple of years, I kept com­ing back to the ques­tion, “what blog­ging plat­form should I choose?” I would type in com­par­isons for Word­Press and Mov­able Type, hope to find some­thing recent, try to read up about how some­thing worked with my host, hope that that was recent, etc., etc. I would dab­ble with a few here and there, but because I love to pro­cras­ti­nate (and am great at ratio­nal­iz­ing my pro­cras­ti­na­tion), it took me a long time to get to where I am.

In the last month or so, I have taken a much closer look not only at Word­Press (which I am using to run this site), but also the newly released Mov­able Type 4.1 OS, the RC2 can­di­date for Dru­pal 6 and the recently released Joomla 1.5

Read on to see some of my brief thoughts on each. As I said, I hope to have a more thor­ough eval­u­a­tion up on Down­load Squad soon. Worst case sce­nario, I’ll just do the series here.

1. Word­Press (.org)

Pros:

• Free
• HUGE user com­mu­nity for support/plugins/themes
• Very, very easy to set-up, espe­cially for peo­ple who still get squea­mish over FTP (to those peo­ple: start get­ting com­fort­able or go with a hosted solu­tion — you have to use FTP if you want to main­tain your own site/blog)
• Sup­ports mul­ti­ple users with Word­Press MU
• One instal­la­tion can run mul­ti­ple blogs
• The com­mer­cial coun­ter­part, WordPress.com (and its com­pany, Automat­tic), just got a huge bankroll in Round “B” fund­ing. Yes, they are sep­a­rate enti­ties, but that kind of fund­ing means that the com­mer­cial arm will be around for a long time, and by exten­sion, have a vested inter­est in con­tin­u­ing to develop WordPress.org. This isn’t going to die from lack of updates.

Cons:

• Not as secure as some of the other options, namely Dru­pal. It is imper­a­tive that you always keep your instal­la­tion updated, and updat­ing is a bit more dif­fi­cult than just installing.
• The Dash­board kind of sucks. It’s sup­posed to be updated in the forth­com­ing 2.5 release, but right now, it’s ugly and not always easy to manage
• Because the com­mu­nity is so large, it can be dif­fi­cult sep­a­rat­ing the good from the use­less. Pars­ing all the infor­ma­tion into some­thing usable and use­ful can be difficult.
• As soon as some­thing becomes suc­cess­ful, you see the grifters come out from under their rocks. Mean­ing you can find plu­g­ins with ad-code for the cre­ator invis­i­bly inserted, themes with hid­den ads, etc., etc.

Bot­tom Line: For new users, this is prob­a­bly the best of main­stream options sim­ply because of how much sup­port exists. The num­ber of tools and plu­g­ins avail­able dwarfs the com­pet­ing plat­forms and devel­op­ment is always active. If you have the time to code your own stuff and don’t rely on plu­g­ins as much, look­ing at other options might be ben­e­fi­cial, espe­cially when it comes to web-based man­age­ment and security.

1. Mov­able Type 4.1 Open Source

Pros:

• The first sta­ble release of Mov­able Type Open Source (MTOS) is now avail­able, a return of sorts to the pre-2004 licens­ing brouhaha.
• Once installed, is very easy to man­age from the Dashboard.
• Lots of plu­g­ins and themes are avail­able (be sure to check that they are com­pat­i­ble with your installation)
• MTOS and MT 4.1 have some really great built-in fea­tures like multi-user sup­port, OpenID, cus­tom fields, author avatars, etc.
• Again, the com­pany behind the project is self-sustaining and not likely to dis­ap­pear any­time soon.

Cons:

• The instal­la­tion is a bitch. A total, total bitch. I’ve finally got it down so that I can get it run­ning as fast as I can get Word­Press set-up, but it took far too much time and too much doc­u­men­ta­tion to fig­ure it out. You have CHMOD all the CGI files, which is fine, but then you have to make sure that your server can sup­port CGI enabled fold­ers, oth­er­wise the CGI has to go in a sep­a­rate place. Then there’s the whole “mt-static” quandary. I didn’t have to move my CGI scripts or the “mt-static” folder, but the doc­u­men­ta­tion wasn’t overtly clear about how those two steps are not always required. Install is a total, total bitch.
• They are still try­ing to push the com­mer­cial vein for Mov­able Type 4.1. I get and under­stand that, but I have ques­tions about how fre­quently MTOS will be updated and what kind of com­mu­nity sup­port it will truly have.
• The devel­op­ment com­mu­nity isn’t as active as Word­Press and many of the styles and plu­g­ins are for older ver­sions of the software.

Bot­tom Line: After it’s installed, this is a pretty ele­gant CMS with a nice inter­face and lots of avail­able options. It isn’t as sup­ported by the com­mu­nity as Word­Press but many of the built-in fea­tures take care of some of those prob­lems. If you truly want your blog to be an exten­sion of your web page and man­age both together, MTOS seems to do a bet­ter job, espe­cially with Sta­tic Con­tent, than WordPress.

1. Dru­pal

Pros:

• Free
• Very secure
• A true CMS, very dynamic/scalable
• Active devel­op­ment com­mu­nity (caveat, not the same as active style/theme community)
• Very easy to man­age more than one site or mul­ti­ple users

Neu­tral:

1. No, I’d pre­fer no to link to it — I did ref­er­ence it in an ear­lier post and am work­ing on import­ing the best of the 1000 or so entries into a “Christina’s Past Writ­ings” sec­tion, but you really don’t want to read about my var­i­ous dra­matic expe­ri­ences start­ing at the end of high school and going through col­lege — well, my tra­di­tional col­lege expe­ri­ence; the fact that I’m tak­ing for­ever and a day to grad­u­ate is nei­ther here nor there. [↩]

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