I am still running an old version of .Text and it has some issues. Somehow I broke something so trackbacks aren’t really working right, and editing posts through the metablogapi doesn’t work anymore either. I have been contemplating updating to community server, but I have also been looking around at some of the engines out there. The main thing I am looking for is extensibility and additional features around advertising (mostly for betterinasong.com).
WordPress seems to be where it’s at. There are tons of extensions out there and a very active development community. Anyone out there have experience working with it? How was the setup? Did you transfer posts and comments over? Did you get links working correctly?
I sure wish it was .NET, but at this point I am looking for the best tool regardless of platform.
-James
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Why not use Community Server? It’s got a pretty active following and is moving forward very quickly — see http://www.communityserver.org for what’s new lately…
Community Server is definitly a possibility, but if you take a look at the number of cool WordPress plug-ins it makes a compelling case for that platform. As far as I know there is no easy way to create a plug-in for community server. I have also never liked the idea of having to install everything when I really just want a blog. I could still go that way though.
-James
Well as one of the former subtexters and a CS holdout (well until I jumped to telligent
, I can tell you that CS has come along way… There is a lot of momentum, and Telligent is investing 5 or 6 full time and countless other part time resources at improving community server. We will be starting to alpha our 1.2 release soon, and you can upgrade you .Text blog entries and database directly to CS 1.1…
At this point CS does require you to be a bit technical to extend, but this process is getting easier with each rev as the platform matures. I would take a close look http://communityserver.org as part of your decision making process. There is also an active support community there.
Dan
James – you’re right – Wordpress has a hell of a lot more plugins. Why not migrate to CS, and then write a few with us. Migration is easy, and The CS code is nice to work with when it comes to figuring it all out for mods.
I’ve decided to use Wordpress. Whilst it isn’t .Net (and I’m a .Net developer) I don’t want to be spending all my non-work time cutting code for my own site. I wanted something I could get up and running quickly and easily, that I didn’t have to invest massive amounts of time to learn, and that did had enough support to produce plenty of excellent plugins.
.Net + SQL2k hosting is a lot more expensive than Apache/MySQL hosting too, so that had some part in the decision.
Also, Wordpress 1.6 is looking very nice, with some excellent new features.
I didn’t migrate any content – from what I hear, it shouldn’t be too hard to migrate across though. Apparently, 1.6 will have a migration tool built in, but I neither know when it’s likely to be released, nor whether it will support .Text.
HTH.
CS works great for me running on that little box I bought off of you. I spend about two hours trying to figure it out and haven’t touched it yet. Why not upgrade to CS? If only the gallery was as user-friendly as the blog engine…
Since some of the other CS devs have ganged up on you, I might as well do the same
. Ok I keed I keed…but the fact that it’s written in C# was reason enough for me. 1.2 is going to be a pretty huge point release for CS…have a look at my post here about it: http://jaysonknight.com/blog/archive/2005/10/05/2207.aspx
Regardless, best of luck
.
Since no one else has mentioned it, I figured I toss Typo out there. Lighttpd is stupid easy to setup if you can find a host. I use TextDrive, but the whole Apache proxy-pass thing was really more of a pain than it should have been IMO.
Typo itself is great though. Fast, does what I need, prettier/slicker than any of the .Net-land engines I’ve seen (though I have looked at CS1.2 to be fair), and it doesn’t get much more extensible than a Rails app.
Advantages:
* Learn how the Rails pros do it.
* Textile/Markdown (Redcloth/Bluecloth) is way cool. Why is it that nobody (exaggeration) on the MS side of the fence talks about it? FreeTextBox is really sweet, but 95% of the time I’d prefer a TextArea with Textile.
* Great community support.
* It’s prettier.
Disadvantages:
* It’s not .Net.
* A TextDrive setup is going to take a few hours. Hosting somewhere else, who knows? Host it yourself? On a Linux machine? Couldn’t be easier. On Windows? Apache configuration is more involved, and if you’ve never seen a httpd.conf file, you’re definitely not going to enjoy the experience.
* CS is probably more stable code-base wise. Typo development moves at a pretty fast pace.
* The default theme gets old quick.
I’ve been on WordPress for over a year and found it a great tool. Once I got over my .NET bias… and that took a little bit of work. My gavorite aspect is – just like you pointed out – a very active user community. The only drawback I could find so far has nothing to do witht he Wordpress engine. Its the way I have to interact with its database (MySQL) at the ISP. So I can heartily recommend it.
Why not DasBlog ?
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