Hey, does anyone know of any blog or chat software that I can put directly on a website, behind a password protection, rather than link to an external blog client (is client the right word?) or chat board?
Bonus challenge: must be FREE.
Login systems can be put “in front of” pretty much any website you like. If you’re using the apache web server, the typical simple solution is to use its built-in authentication scheme. See http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/howto/htaccess.html for an introduction - it’s just a matter of placing 2 extra files in the root directory of your application.
ETA: more in-depth apache docs: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/howto/auth.html#basicconfig
ETA2: as for free blogging software, i like Wordpress
e107 and Drupal are both free content managment systems with chat and blog modules.