[WEB4LIB] RE: Moveable Type for Libraries

[Bollinger,Stephen]

I've recently been experimenting with Thingamablog (http://thingamablog.sourceforge.net/).  It essentially creates a blog on your desktop machine and then ftp's it to your server space.  The plus is that you don't need extensive server support (no need for a database or CGI functionality on the server).  The minus is that there is no 'comment' feature.  Of course if you don't want comments (or spam) then that's less of a worry.  It's Java based and I've tested it on both PC and Mac (OS X).

It also uses MT-compatible themes and outputs clean XHTML 1.0.  You can take a look at my example blog at http://umich.edu/~spbollin/

Of course, I've also been looking at Wordpress and MT, but here's some other alternatives to look at:
http://www.easymoblog.org/ - Software for mobile blogging
http://www.s9y.org/ - PHP-based full-featured blogging
http://facto.sourceforge.net/ - Blogging for the ASP crowd
http://u-blog.sourceforge.net/en/ - Yet another blogging system

Yours,
-Steve

Stephen Bollinger
Internet Specialist
CAPITAL AREA DISTRICT LIBRARY
401 South Capitol Avenue
Lansing, MI  48901-7919
http://www.cadl.org/


-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib at webjunction.org]On Behalf Of lists at lisnews.com
Sent: Monday, November 08, 2004 7:54 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] RE: Moveable Type for Libraries


Thanks Karen for pointing out the newer MT versions have better prtection
against SPAMMERS. At this point I've only read about the new MT goodies.

> As a WordPress user, I can confirm that WordPress is not immune to comment
> spam. It's also a big problem. WordPress users who have comment moderation
> turned on can catch all this stuff and delete it, but it's a tedious job.

Like David points out, all of the more popular blogging packages will have
SPAM troubles. The process MT goes through to post a comment is
computationally VERY expensive, that is, every time the mt comments file
is hit I can see it taking up a rather significant amount of processesor
power. The same is not true for WP, at least at this point. That's
probably just something sysadmins need to worry about, but it is something
to keep in mind.


> WordPress, compared to MT (at least the older 2.x Perl versions), is very
> simple to install and upgrade.

Yes WP is a breeze to install compared to the older MT versions. I've
installed both systems more times than I can count and WP wins hands down
on ease of install. The majority of the sites we host have one or the
other running now.

-Blake