Giving a Blog - a guide to providing blogs
I think that what we’ve been exploring up till now is how people use blogs & aggregation individually and how blogs act as alternative publishing / broadcasting media, whereas in 2005 - 2006 we’re going to start to have reconceptualise what exactly blogging is and in light of this what kind of multi-user blogging tools can best facilitate the uses of the technology in business, educational, community and other contexts.
To put it simply pre-2005 has been about ‘Getting a blog’, post-2005 will be about ‘Giving a blog’.
So, what I’m going to do here at Blogsavvy is to run an extended and developing series of reviews and opinion exploring and examining tools for providing blogs, existing examples of ‘blog giving’ services and strategies for giving blogs effectively.
I’m going to use this post as a steering point and index for the series, please comment with examples and tools you think are worth a look and I’ll cover as many as are valuable, here’s the initial list:
Giving a Blog - Tools
(open source)
1. WordPress Multi User
2. Drupal
3. pLog
4. Elgg
(commercial)
1. Movable Type
2. Manila
Giving a Blog - Examples
1. Blogger
2. LiveJournal
3. MSN Spaces
4. warwickblogs
5. Weblogs@UPEI
6. blogs.sun.com
7. edublogs.org
8. EDUCAUSE Blogs
9. Eduforge blogs
10. Share your story
Major considerations
1. Blogging engines
2. Aggregation
3. Integration with other tools
4. Community drivers
more…
So please let me know if you think I should be looking at some more or different tools, issues or examples… and if you get the chance please participate in the discussion… should be an interesting few weeks!
Find expert WordPress and WordPress MultiUser (WPMU) development and consulting at Incsub.
About:
August 10th, 2005 at 9:59 pm
Hello,
Personnaly i use Dotclear (open source).
But i actually evaluate b2evolution (open source too) to initiate multi-blogs with my students.
August 12th, 2005 at 1:21 pm
[…] 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 […]
August 13th, 2005 at 3:50 am
Looking forward to this discussion, James.
I’ve used Drupal / CivicSpace. It is very easy to install. In fact, I’ve had easier experiences with CivicSpace installs than Drupal. Strange, I know. They are so much alike, I never quite understand why the issues arise. I’ve tried both of them on two very different server setups, too.
The WordPress multiblog aspect has promise. I’m especially impresed by your edublogs :: “Create your free WordPress edublog” project. I would love to be able to do that for our niche group of PR educators.
I expect to learn a great deal from this. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences.
August 13th, 2005 at 7:13 am
One criteria I’d look for is the ability to use categories to ‘tag’ individual posts, and then be able to search/sort/find posts by those categories.
WP does allow that, but Blogger doesn’t.
August 15th, 2005 at 10:19 am
Hmmm.. Civicspace could well be worth a look.. thanks for that Robert.
Get in touch over the email james at incsub dot org and lets talk about PR stuff further!
Alice, thanks for that, Id agree that categories & tags are useful considerations indeed.
August 16th, 2005 at 1:55 pm
[…] Something I’m going to explore in more depth in my Giving a Blog series over at blogsavvy is what exactly makes or breaks a blog community. Squashed finger aside though I couldn’t resist linking up Josie’s intro into Eduforge blogs, Stephen’s reminder of EDUCAUSE blogs the ever expanding edublogs site - 430 odd last time I looked!), a fascinating conversation I had with Mike Seyfang of LearnDog this morning and this interesting post on that old banana, discussion boards and blogs. […]
August 16th, 2005 at 10:33 pm
As you know, I’m having problems with comment and trackback spam with my Drupal installation. Drupal is “community plumbing” and not the best “just for blogging” platform. Not sure if these are criteria but two issues with Drupal for bloggers are:
1. You cannot block-delete a number of comments (a real problem when you get hundreds of spam)
2. Drupal 4.6.2 has a bug that lets spammers post to deleted nodes.
These problems don’t arise until your blog gets popualr enough to attract spammers, and by then you have already invested in hundreds of posts. I would say that spam-resistance is a criterion.
August 17th, 2005 at 6:59 am
When looking for blog software to recomend to my clients, I look for simple interface, WYSIWYG editor, easy access to the CSS, catagories and easy multi-service pinging. Have I found something that works and is very inexpensive? Not yet.
August 17th, 2005 at 12:03 pm
Marshall, I don’t know what you consider “very inexpensive” in blogging software, but I think WordPress easily fits that description.
The WordPress MultiUser (WPMU) review James will write, in his “Giving a Blog - Tools” series, will explain the pros/cons even better. I’m sure.
The MultiUser is Beta. But, it has a lot of promise.
WordPress is:
- opensource (free, except for the sweat equity),
- a $9.00/mo. (US) hosting account (and some are available for less),
- offers all of your requests re: “simple interface, WYSIWYG editor, easy access to the CSS, catagories and easy multi-service pinging”
- on a $9.00 (US) - or less - domain.
Is that inexpensive enough?
I said free above, but - is anything really free? No. Even your Blogger/Blogspot account has ‘costs’ associated with it - if only in time spent tweaking it. Let’s just say it is the easiest of the dozen+ or so I’ve setup/launched and tried out.
August 17th, 2005 at 2:16 pm
Yes, I think that ‘content production’ tools and spam issues are two big issues that need to be looked at… I’m really keen not to get too down into the feature ticking department though as that can quickly change and it’s more the philosophical underpinnings of the tools that I’m shooting at. Still, thanks again, much appreciated!
August 18th, 2005 at 4:31 am
Robert, that’s great. I’ve been pondering use of wordpress for sure. Thanks for the info.
August 31st, 2005 at 11:48 pm
[…] 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! […]
September 7th, 2005 at 11:00 pm
Fornire blog, analisi dei software disponibili
Con quasi un mese di ritardo vi segnalo un’interessantes serie di post di James Farmer (blogsavvy) sulle soluzioni multiutente/multiblog per blog.
Farmer passa in rassegna i software che 猫 possibile usare per “fornire” blog ad altri…
September 12th, 2005 at 2:41 pm
[…] We have the tools and the hardware costs would be the same (or a lot less). […]
October 24th, 2005 at 3:46 pm
[…] 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. […]
October 28th, 2005 at 9:43 am
[…] 从调查网站来看取样似乎不是很大，而且该站使用了WP，所以结果存在偏差是难免的，姑妄听之，作参考。 相关评论可参考作者网站。– D.J. […]
October 31st, 2005 at 10:31 am
[…] James Farmer provides a Guide to providing a blog […]
November 16th, 2005 at 3:12 pm
[…] 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 grab the feed to keep up with new stuff! […]