BLOGSAVVY

Reading a post by D’Arcy Norman expounding (a bit) on the global community of edubloggers that Josie Fraser is illustrating through her rather nifty use of the mapping tool Frappr got me thinking about how perhaps the massive globalisation of our communities through blogs might in fact be creating far more local communities than we already have.

Put it this way, existing pre-web and to a large degree pre-blog our communities were generally made up of people geographically close to us. Yes, there have always been conferences and yes there have, in an academic sense at least, always been journals and alike but essentially our day to day communities were the people we work and socialise with. In fact, the development of listservs, newsgroups and alike didn’t necessarily change this to any great degree, we were still essentially part of a particular group which we had joined and our communities were people in that group.

Continue reading Are global communities more local than we might expect?

Find expert WordPress and WordPress MultiUser (WPMU) development and consulting at Incsub.

These are the final ratings of a broader review of the multi-user blogging solutions Drupal, Elgg, Manila, Movable Type, WordPress MultiUser and pLog. These particular applications were selected for review due to the authors familiarity with them, their php / MySQL configuration and… time limitations. If you would like to suggest another particular product and offer a comparison between it and these here, please do so in the comments.

Drupal is an excellent content management system or focussed community management application that doesn’t really cut the mustard when it comes to providing multiple blogs. Technically perfect but is limited by a focus on the group rather than the individual. Worth a look as this might be what you’re after. Read the complete review.

Elgg is perhaps the most promising open source social networking application out there. Founded on a blogging principle and incorporating many more community and networking tools, it’s well worth a look and will be even moreso by the time it hits 1.0. Read the complete review.

Manila has been ahead of the crowd for a long long time now. Problem is that it hasn’t moved much itself in that time and while the concept is brilliant, the execution is less so. Everyone should experience it, am not sure how much you’ll gain through using it though. Read the complete review.

Movable Type has a well deserved reputation as one of the best blogging tools available. Add to this corporate support and you’ll probably be happy you went down this route. However, with less momentum than it’s competitors, significant costs in starting up and a famously tricky technical composition it might pay off to take the small risk on an open source solution. Read the complete review.

WordPress Multi User (WPMU) is beginning to establish itself as the standard in multi user blogging. While many projects might prefer a more stable or community based solution for pure blogging with strong open source credentials and an exciting future ahead this may be the answer you’re looking for. Read the complete Review.

pLog is a clear, simple and effective open source multi user blogging tool. With an established community and stable build this should be in consideration whatever application of blogs you are considering. Read the complete review.

Find expert WordPress and WordPress MultiUser (WPMU) development and consulting at Incsub.

This is part of a larger, ongoing series which examines how - in 2005 / 2006 - you can give people blogs. Visit the contents page to see the lot (or suggest more content!) or grab the feed to keep up with new stuff!

Alright, hands up first off because while WPMU is the last multi-blogging tool I’m reviewing, it was also the first one on the list as it’s the tool that I use for projects such as edublogs and prblogs. Still, this doesn’t make it necessarily the *best* multi blogging solution out there… just the one that happened to cross my radar when I was (a.) using WordPress and which (b.) had a simple ‘create your blog’ page.

In terms of the journey WPMU has been down, it’s been a long and interesting one. Starting off as a hack of b2 (now known as b2evolution) called b2++ by Donncha O’Caoimh it’s gone through a range of different forms to find it in it’s current state where it provides the base for wordpress.com and many more WPMU-based sites (check out the list down the sidebar).

Essentially WPMU provides each user with a version of WordPress with all it’s world-leading functionality. This includes simple uploading of images and image management, detailed user management (although ‘add user’ - outside of existing users on that system - has been deliberately turned off), uses of ‘pages’ as well as ‘posts’, multiple effective plugins and a range of possible themes. As a blogging engine it’s unsurpassed. If you’re an education professional then get yourself an edublogs.org site, if not try one of the ones listed through the link above (I’m a particular fan of BeBlogging.com and wugga.com)

However, there are drawbacks. The software itself has still to be given an ‘alpha’ release, yet alone a ‘beta’ and if you’re uncomfortable with finding out things for yourself or using the excellent forums then you could struggle without a good grasp of php (I don’t have a good grasp, I know you’ll struggle!). Perhaps of more concern though is the lack of ‘independence’ that the blogs have in terms of templates and plugins. For example, it is currently impossible (beyond designing and having uploaded your own individual template) to edit a template to your choosing and if you want a particular plugin, then you’ve just got to persuade the admin to make it available site-wide.

Indeed, it could be argued, that if WordPress can live up to it’s promise as being *the* excellent independent blogging tool, then as long as WPMU only allows a limited amount of independence to each blogger… this opens up the field for whoever effectively can. As long as blogs are going to be the jumping off point for digital identity, independence of design is going to be critical beyond simply choosing one of 50, 100 or 500 themes. Donncha knew this in developing earlier versions of WPMU (which used smarty templates) but whether this kind of flexibility will be afforded to the current system is unclear as yet.

Having said all of this though, for sheer functionality, potential and application, at this moment it feels a bit like WPMU has the world before it. The potential for applications of tools like global categories, community management features and API use are huge. But time will tell how many steps it takes.

Find expert WordPress and WordPress MultiUser (WPMU) development and consulting at Incsub.