Friday, October 18, 2002

Using different weblog tools It's been a busy week. I completed an install of Moveable Type and have a preliminary idea of its functionality. From what I've found, I'd begin to make a comparision chart like this:   Pros Cons Manila EASY TO SET UP NEW SITES Powerful scripting capabilities Usable URL structure Relatively expensive Requires dedicated server Must know scripting/coding to customize Single category per post Documentation is not very usable Tends to crash unpredictably (OS X) Moveable Type Free Nicely implemented documentation Stylesheet templates Seems pretty solid (no crashes so far) Very supportive developer community Difficult to set up original installation Difficult (multiple steps) to set up new user space Radio Mobility and off-line editing MULTIPLE CATEGORIES PER POST Somewhat supportive developer community (best if you're a UserTalk coder) Eats up local desktop resources (not trivial in education environment) Still somewhat buggy (weird macro errors, intermittent crashing, etc.) Awkward URL structure (users/0000014) Ultimately, I want to have a weblog tool that: Is accessible from anywhere on the web Is smoothly integrated with my email Is smoothly integrated with my IM tool Allows for conversation and replication of conversation Is as easy as Manila to create new weblogs Has a usable path structure automatically generated (e.g. http://myserver.com/weblogs/dale/) Allows for simple setting of public/private privileges for discreet portions of my site Allows for easy uploading and referencing of graphics and other files   5:49:22 PM    comment []