In my quest for other tools that would support article publishing more ‘naturally’ than MovableType, and are written in PHP, I’ve been putting in quite a bit of surfing. Here’s the results (all links are to the features page if it exists):
* “pMachine”:http://www.pmachine.com/features.php - Not open source, and looks quite similar to MT
* “Drupal”:http://drupal.org/node/view/2 - looks v. promising. However, seems to have ’silly’ (i.e. meaningless) URLs
* “Xaraya”:http://xaraya.com/index.php/news/c28/ - stupid name, but looks to be a promising tool _if_ there’s any kind of blogging capability built in. Seems more skewed towards article publishing.
* “Serendipity”:http://www.s9y.org/features.php - a weblog tool, written in PHP. I like the image management tools, for adding images to your posts.
* “Nucleus”:http://nucleuscms.org/features.php - while it doesn’t sell itself like the other tools, it still seems to have many features.
* “phpX”:http://www.phpx.org/index.php?id=9 - by far the least suited at first glance, as it’s very much a portal system
* “TikiWiki”:http://tikiwiki.org/TikiFeatures - another promising system, certainly seems full-featured, although I wonder how much work it would take to make it work, as it seems quite a rigid framework.
* “WordPress”:http://www.wordpress.org - an up and coming PHP weblog. I like what I’ve seen so far, but it’s still under heavy development. _[Aside: "Tim Parkin":http://pollenation.net/journal/ is using it for his journal]_
* “coWiki”:http://www.develnet.org/ - this would be the first one I’d try - Rui Carmo has been recommending that I try a wiki (a tool-type I dislike for a number of reasons, not least “BashedURLsAreHardToRead”:# and lack of structure). However coWiki has a “slightly different philosophy”:http://www.develnet.org/CoWiki/ThePhilosophy. Unfortunately though, it only works with PHP5 
Oh, and like Drupal, it has meaningless URLs (each page is named numerically), although there are meaningful permalinks. Maybe this is still to be added throughout?
* “BBlog”:http://www.bblog.com/ - Uses “Smarty”:http://smarty.php.net/ as part of its core, with most features implemented as plugins. And, it has *threaded comments!*. Still under very heavy development.
* Finally, and added more for reference as a curiosity, “Komplete Lite”:http://www.interakt.ro/products/KompleteLite/index.php - a free version of Komplete, which can act as a CMS or blog. Interesting concept, but I don’t think it will suit me, as there appears to be too much hand-holding.
I’m guessing I’m not a typical blogger here, as most of the tools linked to above are not really blogging tools. As a keen amateur photographer I want to add a gallery or something to this domain (and yes, while I could install “ExhibitEngine”:http://photography-on-the.net/ee/ or my own gallery program, I’m lazy and would like it integrated)
I also want to be able to integrate Textile into whatever tool I use, as while it has a few problems, it’s one of the best tools I’ve come across yet (I use it here).
As a user, some of the tools listed above being cut down versions of a commercial tool is enough to put me off - I like things to be totally free. But as a developer, I understand their reasoning. I think it’s one of those conflicts I’ll never resolve 
I’m planning on downloading a few of these to try them. If/when I get round to this I’ll post some feedback
h4. Changelog
# 2003/08/17
** Added wordpress and cowiki to the list.
# 2003/08/20
** Added BBlog.
9 comments ↓
Well, I would propose hacking PhpWiki (http://phpwiki.sf.net) to your convenience. I’ve done exactly that, and suggest you visit my site in a week or so (I’m on vacation right now, so I switched off the main server and put up a temporary skeleton site using ErfurtWiki).
Thanks Rui, I’ll try and remember to have a look.
Have you looked at WordPress?
http://wordpress.org/
Aw, fooey, posted before I finished writing.
Anyhow, WordPress is still under active development at the moment, but there are number of features coming down the pipe that might interest you. I’ve gotten support for metaWeblog API and MovableType API mostly done (definitely functional, but still needs some interal cleanup). Another future feature will be a system for configurable URI schemes. You’ll have a highly flexible method for defining how you’d like URLs for permalinks and such to be formatted.
And there are other things being hacked out, as well, such as the modifications listed here:
http://alexking.org/index.php?content=software/b2/content.php
Dougal: yes I have, and I can’t think how I forgot it in my list above
WordPress looked very much like a normal blogging tool (i.e. no more support for articles than MovableType) and currently has less features than MovableType. It does look to be one of the most promising PHP weblog tools (although Serendipity looks good as well), so I will be keeping an eye on it.
A link I came across summarising what the author thought were the “best wiki solutions”:http://www.spack.org/index.cgi/WikiSoftware.
I liked “Pile”:http://pile.codewhore.org/, which describes itself as: ??a document storage and presentation system designed to make cross referencing information easy??
Hmmmm…. coWiki looks nice. My own Wiki (which looks nothing like a wiki right now) is starting to adhere to that tree format (stuff like HOWTO/PHP/Techniques/etc.), and a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I thought of adding user/group protection along those very same lines.
I think you’ve just shown me what I might migrate to eventually.
Another typical blog tool, but looks nice and uses Smarty: “pLog”:http://plog.sourceforge.net/
I see you are still using movable type. I have really enjoyed using Movable Type. But
1) I am using other php stuff, like an Invision Board (really excellent forum software with state of the art skinning), Moodle (superb educational software) Voodoo Chat (great chat software) that is all php/Mysql. Movable Type is the odd one out in Perl and I don’t want learn two langauges. Ideally I would like integration but even if there is no integration, at least integration of technology.
2)Movable Type has Japanese language issues. The mt.cfg suggests Shift_JIS but the Japanese language pack is compatable with EUC and UTF-8. This means I have to renstall my blog.
3)Movable Type allows blog entry backup but no backup of the blog itself. I would have to save all my templates to save a blog. I would really like some better back up options.
4) Movable type’s text area is a pain. I failed to intall htmlarea and zempt is non Japanese language compatible. An okay javascript or (again for consistencies sake, php) rich text area seems almost essential. I see that you are using “Textile Markup” but hey, what is wrong with using a GUI? richtextarea or htmlarea should come as standard, if you ask me. This text area business is stone age. I am a bit of a geek but I still prefer richtextarea. There is a really nice php one around.
5) Movable type has some bugs, or at least I cannot use it. Like the other day I was trying to delete some spam comments and the back button gave me perl errors. Or when people post comments to my blog they bring the bottom of the text up beyond the images. I bet any software has bugs but at least it gives me the hope of better.
6) As you mention in your post there are problems with the facilities for adding images. I use html but it does not always work out well.
7) I really like the way that pages written in php resize themselves as you load them up!
As someone mentioned at serendity (nice but rather minor and with Japanes language issues) you have to learn a new a new scripting language in order to control the templates. I still have not figured it out.
On the plus side for movable type, there is a superb community and people like girlie provide free support. This is truly wonderful.
Please let me know where you decide to go. Timothy Takemoto
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