I use LiveJournal for my online journal, but I want to start doing a (I shudder to use this word because I hate it) blog type thing on my site that is more like a weekly article. I like the “blog” format rather than just doing a new article on my own in HTML (especially because of the built in commenting features and archiving).
So I’d like to know if anyone has used any and which ones you’d recommend? Here is what I’m looking for:
Free or very cheap
Something that runs on my server (not a remotely hosted service)
Simple way to integrate my own template, via headers/footers or similar
Commenting feature
Archiving
RSS enabled would be cool
I’d also like it if it had an updating program (windows based) that was not a web interface, but I can live with a web interface if I must.
I’ve been using Moveable Type for mine, and it fits all your criteria.
Free or very cheap - you can download it for free, support costs money. I found the manual very easy to use.
Something that runs on my server (not a remotely hosted service) - Yup. I set it up on my server.
Simple way to integrate my own template, via headers/footers or similar - all the templates are customizable via HTML. It takes a little bit to figure out just which template does what, but I figured it out with a little experimentation, and would be happy to answer any questions.
Commenting feature - yup
Archiving - yup
RSS enabled would be cool - haven’t tested this, but it’s there.
I’d also like it if it had an updating program (windows based) that was not a web interface, but I can live with a web interface if I must. - I think there’s something like this, but haven’t used it myself.
The only bitch I have about it is that the notifications on the current version don’t seem to work, but I figure they’ll fix them soon. If I weren’t so lazy, I could look at the code and fix them myself, but I’m lazy.
I’m a little nervous about templates as it can be so hard to have to modify an existing site’s SSI header/footer thing into some complex template system for certain pages (I have some problems with that with some areas of my site already that I haven’t had time to go untangle… ugh) but I would try to give it a go…
I’ll look into those two… anyone else have any recommendations?
I’m using Wordpress, and have used Movable Type in the past.
Basically, Wordpress is much more bleeding edge than Movable Type. This is good when you want a new feature or new plugin, as they seem to be developed much more rapidly for Wordpress than Movable Type, but Wordpress suffers in stability somewhat. Unless you’re constantly running nightly builds (and who would want to), most plugins are going to require some manual tweaking or Forum help to really get running right.
Movable Type’s free version is limited in the number of blogs/users, while Wordpress is not. Wordpress is GPLed, if that’s important to you. Personally, I’ve found that adding personal hacks to Wordpress is easier than to Movable Type. Now that Movable Type’s got paid versions, I imagine that’s only more the case.
Livejournal has some things about it that annoy me and would be incompatible with my site. Not sure how much of that is easily configurable… such as it doesn’t allow javascript.