Garrison Keillor

For better or worse, I’m a major National Public Radio nerd, to the extent that most Saturday evenings you can find me (if you’re a stalker) at home listening to A Prairie Home Companion, the folksie, olde-timey radio show hosted by the inimitable national treasure Garrison Keillor. What can I say — although I grew up in New Jersey (God’s country), my folks are originally from Minnesota, so it’s my long-time ritual way of keeping in touch with my ancestral homeland.

On the subway ride to work today, I was browsing my new PHC catalog (the print edition), and because multi-channel marketing really does work, I called up the catalog and show’s web site, where I discovered Keillor’s “blog.” Granted, on the blog homepage itself, it calls itself a “travel diary,” but on the Stuff page, the link that caught my eye says “GK’s Travel Blog.” True, it hasn’t been updated since March, but judging by the archives, he did update it frequently in spurts; maybe he just hasn’t been on the road much since then. Worth keeping an eye on.

The site also blog-like musings from Russ Ringsak the show’s “resident writer and truck driver.”

Link

Questions and answers with Gawker Media’s Nick Denton, whom the WSJ calls a blog “impresario,” discussing specifically the advertising opportunities for weblogs. He discusses why Audi’s interested in being the sole sponsor of Gawker’s car new blog Jalopnik, as well as the mistakes Dr. Pepper made with the infamous Raging Cow blog, among other things.

The link to this article is set to expire in seven days (WSJ.com is a paid subscription site, in case you’re new to this planet), so get it while you can.

WSJ: Questions for…Nick Denton

Passes the Bruner sniff test: it must be a good article, because it quotes me.

General examination of some fake blogging efforts by various marketing agencies, with mixed results. One thing it neglects to note about the central blog in the article, Beta-7: this stunt is more than a year old. Also notes the blatant gaffe by Warner Bros. in having someone from PR litter a blog’s comments section with praise for a new MP3 preview of a band Warner Bros. was backing (d’oh!).

It also quotes Jason McCabe Calacanis with his favorite peeve, that a blog isn’t really a blog if it doesn’t have comments turned on (which is just a transparent attempt to differentiate his Weblogs, Inc. publishing empire from his rival Gawker Media, which doesn’t turn on comments on their blog; my response to which is, so InstaPundit and Boing Boing aren’t really blogs?)

Chicago Trib: Fake Blogs, True Buzz

Nice article about business blogging, not least of which because it features a quote for me. Basically it’s business blogging 101, but it has a few decent insights, including close attention to one of my favorite business blogs, Stonyfield Farm’s, as well as this great comment from Sun Microsystems’ director of web technologies, Tim Bray: “[We’ve] become better at hearing what the market is saying” thanks to blogs.

CFO: Blogging for Dollars

I love this blog! I actually wrote an email today to my buddy Nick Denton of Gawker Media saying that I was talking with some colleagues today about the ways people shop online differently than offline. I wrote to Nick in part:

I think people shop online when they know what they want, but it’s harder to browse online. With Xmas coming up, if I have a specific idea for a present for someone, I’ll get it online for the convenience. But just knowing that I have to buy *something*, I’m more likely to go to some physcial stores where I can just wander around and see what catches my eye.
One exception is when I’m tipped off to fun things through blogs. Often, blogs are great at turning up weird, offbeat products I wouldn’t have seen elsewhere, from some specialty shop or whatever. I can think off the top of my head of at least 3-4 products like that I’ve bought thanks to blogs. So what about a blog specifically about shopping? A personal shopping assistant?

He replied, “have you seen mightygoods.com?” No, I had not, but it’s exactly what I had in mind. Written by Margaret Mason, who writes the wonderful Mighty Girl and is a contributor to The Morning News, the site explains its mission thusly (you know how I love blog mission statements!):

Mighty Goods is a shopping blog that’s updated five days a week. We spend a great deal of time finding and posting things we love. These aren’t just any old things, these are exactly the right things. They will brighten your eyes, match your couch, and fix the annoying problem that’s been bothering you. They will make you want to fortify the economy with your purchasing power.

I love the tagline, too: “Hooray for stuff!”

Link

Three new blogs from Gawker Media: Jalopnik, about cars, Kataku, about computer games, and Screenhead, about “funny shit” (think Fark or Everlasting Blort). More details on Denton’s site, per the link in the headline.

NickDenton.org: Gawker’s testosterone trio

Richard Edelman

Reader David of ContentCentricBlog points out this new blog by CEO and founder of Edelman PR. The blog is titled 6AM. Edelman explains in his first post:

Why 6 AM?–because I wake up early and hope to get you some useful insights as you come in to work. I plan to post weekly, and by calling it 6am, rather than say, Every Monday, so I’ll have a little wiggle room in terms of when I post!

He’s got the jump on Aaron Bailey by one minute.

Link

I’m not sure who Jeff Kang is (he sent me a note via Orkut, indicating we were Orkut buddies, although I don’t recognize his name and Orkut apparently isn’t feeling well tonight so I can’t look him up there at the moment). It’s apparently a PHP-based, server-side blogging tool. The site is thin on details about the product or installation (I haven’t bothered trying to upload it myself yet), not to mention About Us stuff. The G-name would lead one to believe Google has a role, though it’s far from clear whether that’s the case. There is also an accompanying blog, not surprisingly, and a forum, but niether shed much light (okay, I just barely scanned them, but nothing caught my eye). If anyone knows more or has observed more than I have, I trust you’ll point it out.

Link

So, I’ve been meaning to write this post for several days, but I’ve been busy. Busy getting ready for a new full-time job. Yes, as a few of you might have already seen here or here or here or elsewhere, I have taken a position at DoubleClick as Research Manager.

Honestly, I’m thrilled. My private consulting was actually going quite well over the last three years, especially this year, but this job is just a great fit for lots of reasons. It will, however, leave me less time for extracurricular blogging. (You can bet one of my first recommendations on the job will be a…blog, but that wouldn’t be extracurricular, now, would it?)

Less time, but not no time. I am pleased with this little resource I’ve started here. I have ended up getting a few reasonable consulting leads out of the blog, though I can’t honestly say that response on that score has been overwhelming. Moreso have been press interviews — I’ve been averaging about two a week on the subject of business blogs for the last few months.

Anyway, instead of walking away from this or updating it with a post here and there every few weeks, I’ve decided to turn it into a modest group blog. A lot of smart folks out there already touch on this topic of business blogs, but most do it in a rather scatter-shot fashion, along with posts on lots of other unrelated topics. A few others also concentrate on this topic (including some of those I link to in my blogroll), but with all due respect none that I follow do it with as much dedication as I think this resource could offer. Therefore, I’ve asked already a couple of other bloggers to pitch in, and I plan to ask two or three others to pitch in over the coming weeks.

So, without further ado, I’m pleased to announce that Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion and B.L. Ochman of What’s Next will begin blogging here, as soon as they see fit. Steve, as many of you probably know, is a blogging machine, consistently scooping me already on things related to this topic. B.L. is someone I’ve gotten to know personally in the last year or so and have a lot of respect for. They’re both PR professionals, which I don’t hold against them. I’ll try to find some other folks to help out here who come at the topic from a different discipline, so this isn’t doesn’t turn into just another PR blog. (BTW, I’ll update the site shortly, probably over the weekend, to include pointers to them in the left column About This Blog stuff.)

Anyway, thanks to all my many (several?) readers who seem to have found value in this site over the last few months. Anyway, this isn’t goodbye, it’s just hello steady paycheck.

UPDATE:
Great news: Todd S. of A Penny For… has also agreed to pitch in.

Folks, I’ve been contacted by a journalist for a major media outlet who wants to write a story about blogs helping people land jobs. She’s seeking examples of such. Only caveat is outside of the realm of journalism, as she already has examples of that. If you have such a story to share or know of someone who does, email me at rick at e-summary dot com. Need this ASAP; don’t bother later than Friday of this week.

Search Engine Watch, the definitive site on all things search engine, now has a blog authored by Search Engine Watch’s found Danny Sullivan and Gary Price.

Link

Engadget’s Phillip Torrone Hacks
the Evolution 2000 in seconds

This is so incredible. You had better believe that Kryptonite, makers of the most popular bicycle locks in the United States, will know what blogs are from this week forward. I believe the story was actually broken last weekend on a web-based discussion board, BikeForums.com, where a user observed that using a 10-cent Bic ballpoint pen you could easily pick a $100 Kryptonite lock. A variety of Kryptonite products seem vulnerable to this. The above link (see headline) is to a video of how to do it, in case you had any doubts. (Other videos here and here.) I just heard the story also on National Public Radio, and it also ran today in the NY Times, and it’s basically breaking out all over the place.

NYT photo

Incredibly, Kryptonite’s site (which is loading veeerrrry slooooowly today) still has nothing about this issue, a week after the story broke, despite the homepage ironically proclaiming “This is the place to get the most information about our products, our dealer locations, our company and more.” The most recent news on the homepage is about their having moved office locations in June 2002. (I see that they did provide a response to Engadget, and it’s less than encouraging that they’re on top of the crisis, or unclear that they even view it as a crisis.)

This is simply going to devistate Kryptonite. Too bad, I’ve always been a fan. Of course, this isn’t principally a communication problem; it’s a product problem. The only thing I could think that might save their business at this point would be a massive recall/refund for every customer with a U-lock. But this is also a communication problem. As a customer (I have four of their locks), I would really like to know whether this problem affect their other products, or whether it is limited to that Evolution 2000. But their communication on this sucks. The story broke online, yet there is nothing about it on their web site. They could really, really use a blog to try to contain the damage ASAP. But looking at their actions so far, I am not optimistic. For myself, I will probably go out and buy another brand this weekend, as I’m not going to risk losing my bike while they try to get their PR act together. (I’m certainly not going to bother trying to call them and wait on hold for 2 days with the volume of calls they must be getting now.)

As Phillip Torrone writes in his Engadget follow-up post:

We’ve spent over $100 on these types of locks for our bicycles, and hearing “the world just got tougher and so did our locks,” kinda got us a little miffed. The world didnít get tougher, it got Bic pens, blogs and your locks got opened.

Sad.

Engadget: Kryptonite Evolution 2000 U- Lock hacked by a Bic Pen

Alright, this isn’t strictly a business blog, though I suppose it probablay has commercial advertising ambitions, but having lived in Budapest Hungary myself for five years in the early 1990s as part of Generation Expat, I have a soft spot for the place. A friend living in Hungary tells me that the author of this new daily blog, Erik D’Amato, intends for it to be “the Gawker of Budapest.” So far, it looks fairly well on the mark.

Having run a newspaper myself for 2-1/2 years in Budapest and struggling with trying to get Hungarians to see the value in advertising in an expat publication (this fresh after communisism, when the whole idea of ads was a foreign concept, literally), I suspect it’s not going to be a cake walk to get Hungarians to advertise on a blog. But I wish him well.

Link

A week after her blogosphere-bombshell “Shitcanned” post where TroutGirl (aka Joyce Park) wrote of getting fired from Friendster for blogging, she tells her side of the story to Red Herring. I still haven’t heard Friendster’s side of the story. Have they told it somewhere that I’ve overlooked?

Thanks to Olivier for the link.

Red Herring: No Friendster of Mine

Very interesting interview on last night’s Marketplace radio program from American Public Media, an interview with futurist Andrew Zolli of Z + Partners. Zolli talks about the impact of blogs, social networks, peer-to-peer behavior and other online trends as creating a “numerical social cartography” that is having a big impact on marketing by letting (smart) companies track buying trends in explicit detail. He knows of what he speaks (Z + Partners even have a (somewhat neglected) blog of their own), with references to David Sifry’s Technorait and The Virtual Book Tour. Here are some roughly transcribed excerpts:

Retailers and marketers of all kinds are looking around social networks to try to create new forms of economic value. A great example of that is something arranged by an author in California called The Virtual Book Tour…. This one little blog [on the virtual tour] may have 100 readers. Well, that’s just as good as going to Minetonka and doing a reading and doing a reading at the local Borders.
…
The file sharing we generate on the Web…. There’s an oportunity to see people doing that in real time and building maps and networks of their social relationships. So this person who is a friend of this person introduced this song to this social network and it spread this quickly. That’s of unbelievable value. That’s the equivalent of going into that person’s bedroom and saying “I was there when this person made that person a mix tape.”
…
Commercial anthropology is here to stay. It is going to lead to shift in how we think about global marketing. We can get very effective at reaching exactly the right five people. That’s the kind of effect this kind of social cartography has on the wolrd of marketing.

Now that’s what I’m talking about!

Marketplace.org: Internet Trends

I’ve said before (here and here) that movies and business blogs are a great mix. Gawker Media is now introducing its second specially commissioned business blog. Nick Denton writes:

Hey, Rick — We’ve launched our second custom blog. The client this time is New Line. We’re doing a site around A Dirty Shame, the new movie by John Waters. Remy, who wrote the Nike blog, is helming this one too.

Gawker Media’s New Commissioned Business Blog, A Dirty Shame, for New Line

Our latest review of a blog publishing platform comes from Harold Jarche and Cameron Bales about Drupal. I knew relatively little about this platform, so I found this review particularly informative. It is thorough and generally quite positive.

Overall, the system sounds quite sophisticated, with advanced CMS (content management system) features that go beyond most blog platforms, particularly in regard to scalability and performance issues as well as administration controls. It is an open-source platform, like WordPress, with an active and growing base of developers and users. Also like WordPress, it is based on PHP, which aids its performance and scalability strengths, and like WordPress (and Movable Type), it requires users to have their own web server or web host. Read Harold and Cameron’s full review below.

Drupal Review

By Harold Jarche
Cameron Bales

Drupal (droo-puhl) is the English pronunciation for the Dutch word ‘druppel’ which stands for “drop.” Drupal is a website building system that allows blogs, stories (like slash), forums (like phpBB). You can set up a publishing workflow so some users are writers and some editors. It has XML/RSS publishing and Aggregation features. Once you figure it out, Drupal is easy to use with the basic features. The great feature about Drupal is how scalable it is. It can start as a small website, but expand into an enterprise CMS.

General performance: What makes this different/better than other blog publishing platforms?

If you are planning a large or busy site you may be excited by the search function, which will search all body text on your site, the cacheing, which pre-builds page content so there are not so many queries to the database so pages are sent faster, and the throttling, which will turn off high-cost features when the site is busy. Cacheing and throttling will allow your Drupal site to survive a “Slashdotting” better than many CMS tools. If you don’t have access to your logs, or for a different view on access to your site, Drupal has built in statistics so you can see what content is popular. You can use this to put up “Popular Today” or “Popular for All Time” information in your site.

Notes on performance:
opensource_performance.pdf
Comparing CMS Performance

What are some of the best advantages about this platform?

Drupal is not a hosted solution, so you will need to find a server. This is an advantage for those who wish to control their content, a critical issue after many years of blog posts, especially if you want to write the next Pulitzer-winning novel. For hosted Drupal solutions, a commercial alternative is Bryght.com.

Being more than just a blogging tool, Drupal is searchable CMS, allows you to quickly build a taxonomy (easy metadata), create static content, and add multiple bloggers. It is a complete web site, portal and blog tool.

The Drupal network uses a distributed authentication system, so that you can use the same login for any Drupal site that has the function activated. It’s one login & password, but for multiple sites. The Drupal community is quickly growing, with over 1,000 registered sites.

What are some of its disadvantages?

Because Drupal has so many features, and different authors have different ideas on the best way to control them, administering Drupal can be a bear while you are figuring out where the control you want is. And 5 months from now, the next time you want that control, again it can be frustrating to know it’s there, but not sure how to get to it.

Currently there is no easy way to upload a file (image, pdf…) with a post; you need to get the file on the server (image module, file upload module) and then know how to make the link to it. This should be fixed in the upcoming version 4.5.

Testing servers for upgrades, new modules, or radical new templates can be a hassle with Drupal, since you have to remember a few places to change the name of the server and clear the cache.

What’s the killer feature, if there is one?

With Drupal, you can start small, but it’s very powerful, so that this one system can stay with you as you grow. Drupal is first a CMS, but also an easy blogging tool, once it’s set up. The killer feature is content management.

Any content (blog entry, book page, image, poll, story) can be marked as “Published” (visible), “in moderation” (ready to be published/approved by editor), “Promoted on front page” (advertised; a portion of the beginning of the content will be show on the front page), “Static on front page” (similar but highlighted at the top above simply promoted items), “Create new revision” (keep copy of present version, and old version possibly with a note on what you changed).

You can set up different user groups with different roles and abilities: some can blog, some can write drafts of stories, some can post stories, some can comment, some can moderate comments.

What features does it lack or need fixing?

By default, Drupal has no easy tagging or WYSIWYG features; they must be installed by module so you can tell they are an accessory, not part of the core of the system.

Where does the publishing engine reside? On its own hosted servers, like Blogger or TypePad? On your own web server, like Movable Type? On your desktop, like Userland Radio? Other? (Outerspace?) What advantages/disadvantages do you see in this approach?

The publishing engine requires your own web server, or you can opt for a commercial Drupal service provider. This means that you have to purchase a domain, get hosting services and then setup the CMS. This is a disadvantage in terms of initial costs, but in the long run will give you more control over your content.

What’s the geek factor on this? How comfortable can non-technical people be with it?

Cam (the geek) found installing Drupal and getting it running the first time pretty simple. Harold (not a geek) did not even try. The instructions are good. You have to be sure the .htaccess file is read and mod_rewrite can work so friendly urls can work. Getting the basic database definition loaded was fairly simple using PHPMyAdmin. More difficult is the administration since there are so many features, installing non-core modules that may need database tweaks, and upgrades if you want to have a testing server. It is less geeky that TikiWiki and differently geeky than Gallery.

Once the main system was setup, Harold has had no difficulties maintaining content, tweaking the system and modifying the layout.

What’s the learning curve? Totally intuitive? Lots of features, thus requiring more time to familiarize yourself with all of it?

As mentioned, the learning curve is not too steep. You can set up a basic installation, and let it run. Later, you can add features and functions. Our sites have been set up in the course of a week, with probably a total of 6 to 8 hours of work, but some of this is loading graphics and getting the right look and feel.

What’s involved in setting it up? If you’re not technical, do you need help?

If you don’t manage your own webserver already, then it is strongly suggested that you get help with the installation. This is not a “setup everything in five steps” installation. Once set up, you will need almost no support.

Like most every open source project, the manual is aiming at a moving target so it may be covering a feature in a previous version; they cleverly don’t have screen shots and they allow comments on the manual pages of the site, so users who can’t edit the body of the pages can make notes on them.

Are there platform restrictions? (E.g., PC/Mac, APS vs. Linux servers, SQL Server, etc.)

Drupal is PHP-based, and Linux is the suggested operating system. Our installations are running on a Mac G4 with no problems at all.

The main code works with most any SQL database, but if you add contributed modules you may be restricted (often just mySLQ sometimes PostgreSQL or Microsoft SQL Server as well); check the docs for the specific module. “Friendly URLs” (no “?” in the url; better for users and search engines) will require mod_rewrite. Because the software resides on a remote server, you will need to make sure the remote backups are happening (possibly simpler than backups on your desktop). You may want to make sure you have access to a database admin tool like PHPMyAdmin if you want to poke around at your database by hand.

Who produces it? Is it an open-source community, a labor-of-love by some programmer, a company with financial backing? What is the likelihood this development team is going to still be at it a year or two from now, providing new features, etc.?

Drupal has been around for three years and has a good developer community. Drupal should be around for years to come. They recently celebrated the 10,000th node (forum topics, project issues, book pages, images and stories) since April 2001; that’s a good measure of how robust the online community is, and there is also a very good dialog in the mailing lists for support, developers, and another noting CVS changes.

The download page at the Drupal site lists about 100 third party modules and about 10 third party templates available for the current version of drupal.

Where is the software developed? How is language support in English (the web site, the manual, the support communities, etc.)? Other languages?

Language support for many single languages per web site (English, or German, or French, or Russian) is supposed to be good and getting better. Drupal doesn’t have good support for bilingual sites, but we haven’t found anything else that does either. The main site, manual, and mailing lists are almost entirely English.

What’s the pricing of it?

Drupal is GPL’d [i.e., free under the General Public License] and works with Apache or IIS web servers, PHP (4), and an SQL database.

Is there tech support?

Tech support is available through the online forums. The support section of the website lists a fair number of people who can offer paid support, either helping you use or set up some feature module, or template, or people who will make you a module or template for a fee. We haven’t used any of this fee based support.

Is there a good user manual?

Like most every open source project the manual is aiming at a moving target so it may be covering a feature in a previous version; they cleverly don’t have screen shots and they allow comments on the manual pages of the site so users who can’t edit the body of the pages can make notes on them.

Is there support for photos galleries?

Yes, but there is no easy way to upload a file (image, pdf…) with a post; you need to get the file on the server (image module, file upload module) and then know how to make the link to it. This should be fixed in the upcoming version 4.5. Each user can have a personal photo gallery as well.

Is there a built-in Blogroll/Link List kind of feature to manage blogrolls?

There is no built-in blogroll feature, but some workarounds are available on the developer forum. Not easy at this time. Drupal allows posting by XML-RPC blog APIs.

Can you post via email? Mobile phone/moblog?

The Mailhandler module allows registered users to create or edit nodes and comments via email. Authentication is usually based on the From: email address. Users may post taxonomy terms, teasers, and other node parameters using the Commands capability. There is not much feedback to date on how well this works.

Does it email posts to subscribers who so choose?

Some administrators may want to download, install and configure. The notify module may be downloaded and installed separately. Users can then request that Drupal send them an e-mail when new comments are posted (the notify module requires that cron.php be configured properly). This has a high geek factor.

Anything notable in the archive features?

Archives as in show a calendar and click a date to see what was posted on that date is available. Archive as in rollback of page content is also available.

Does it support comments? Comment-spam filtering? If so (the latter), what’s the approach?

There is a comment system, you can set it up to accept comments from anyone, or just signed on users. If you allow everyone to comment, there is currently no specific comment spam filtering, but at the same time Drupal isn’t so popular that it has attracted anyone to write a tool to automate comment spamming in Drupal like they have in Movable type (yet).

As the admin, it is pretty easy to see all the new comments on your site and read them and possibly delete them; you don’t have to visit each page to check the comments manually. The admin can set the maximum number of posts per minute, to slow the automatic spammers. You can also force all commenters to preview before they post, another mechanism that will slow down spammers. See also a comment by Morbus Iff on spam filtering in Drupal.

Does it support trackback?

Trackbacks and pings are supported.

Any idea how well it works on a Mac, with Mozilla or other non-W2K IE platforms?

We have used Drupal with a Mac using Safari, Mozilla and IE; as well as a Windows PC using IE and Firefox. All work well.

Does it pioneer any other new blog features that other platforms don’t have?

Not that we know of. The login feature across distributed hosts may be something special.

Does it support multiple authors? If so, does it have decent permission controls? (E.g., can you limit authors to publish only to draft?)

Drupal supports multiple authors, but they each get a separate blog, so it won’t look like a group blog. There is a meta blog of all bloggers on a site. There is a wide range of permissions that the admin can control; this is more usually used for the content management sections of a drupal site, not the blog sections.

Does it support a simple modular design for page elements? (E.g., when editing templates, are things like blogroll lists, sidebar elements, headers, etc., managed as separate entities, or are they all just in the HTML of a single template?)

Drupal uses a modular architecture, so that individual features, like navigation blocks, can be globally changed. Installable modules (plug-ins) can allow features including image galleries, alternate text input styles (BBCode, Wiki, HTMLArea WYSIWYG formatter, Markdown with SmartyPants, Textile), Trackback, and lots of other things.

Is it well suited for public corporate blogging? Why or why not?

Drupal could work well for corporate blogging because it is easy to add bloggers to any installation. Every user gets a personal blog, as well as a personal image gallery. Its scalability would be well-suited to corporate blogging.

Is it well suited for internal corporate blogging? Why or why not?

Drupal could work just as well for internal blogging because there is only one database for the entire site. That way anyone can find information with a single search. The search feature is great, and a blog can be used as personal knowledge management system. Many of Harold’s consulting reports and analyses begin by searching previous posts on his blog.

What other blog platforms have you used that you can compare this to?

Cameron installed and used Drupal for four sites, and has used TikiWiki and Gallery for one site each. Cam has administered a Communigate web server, installed compiled and configured ht:dig for a few sites, used Webmin for Bind and Apache or bare httpd.conf config for over 100 domains. Harold has used Blogger and QuickTopic in the past. We find that Drupal is powerful and flexible, and plan on sticking with it.

Blogging is about the text and having a site that is friendly to users and Google so people can find you, and people will use you. Google quite likes our Drupal sites. For users finding things on the blog, using taxonomy links, links for navigation, or the search all work well.

What else do we need to know about this system?

Next Version 4.5.0 will probably be available Mid Sept 2004.

Multiple sites one installation. It is fairly simple to have multiple sites use one installation of Drupal. You will need to edit the Apache Config file to point multiple sites to the same file location on your server, and have multiple config files that tell which database to use based on which hostname is accessing the site. This allows me to have a directory on my server with 4.3.x installed with a couple of sites, and 4.4.x in it with a couple of sites. Upgrades at the last decimal point can usually be installed with no worries about feature changes so to upgrade all your 4.4.x sites from 4.4.2 to 4.4.3 just dump the new/changed 4.4.3 files in there and you have upgraded all the sites.

Upgrades in the middle decimal point usually have feature/database changes so just dumping the new files on working sites is not the way to go. Usually I duplicate the database, set up a new host (450.bales.ca for the upcoming 4.5.0) set up a config file pointing to the database duplicate, add the 3-4 additional modules I want run the upgrade script, test, configure new features and then once I’m happy make the new install respond to my regular hostname. Remembering to change the Drupal config file so the base url is www…, clearing the cache so you don’t have links to pages on 450…., updating the Apache config properly are a few of the gotchas. It might be simpler and safer to make sure you have a good backup of the database, and do away with the temporary hostname.

Books. You can set up different style sheets for Drupal to use when printing a page – when you choose print page Drupal will group all the sub pages in a ‘book’ for printing in the same print job. A great feature about books is the “Printer-friendly version”, which will take all of the sections and sub-sections of a book and place all of the text and images in order on a single web page. This makes the creation of a brochure from the web very simple.

Templates. We haven’t played with a lot of the template features with Drupal – basically we use one and edited the CSS to get some better colors. There is a group of people in the developer community very interested in the templating and there are 2-3 basic templating methods. The problem with templates is that there are no previews available, so you have to install them before you can see them.

Meta-tags. Drupal uses a meta-tagging system they call “Taxonomy” I’ve seen similar things in Movable Type. This allows hierarchical relationships between your meta tags. If you remember your biology courses you may remember organisms being sorted by Taxonomies. Using/administering/understanding this taxonomy system causes quite a few headaches for new Drupal users.

Here is part of the Taxonomy I use to tag articles on my site:
none
Canada
-New Brunswick
–Sackville
—Sackville Town Council
-Nova Scotia
–Amherst
–Halifax
Coming Apocalypse
Technology
-Computer
–Linux
–Macintosh
–Windows
-DVD

By tagging an entry to be on the topic of “Coming Apocalypse” a link appears on the page allowing users to see all the items in that category.

Drupal links:

• Main Site
• About Drupal
• Features
• Sample sites
• Screen Shots
• Support
• Mailing Lists
• Documentation – online
• Documentation – formatted for printing
• Online forums
• Downloads: main system, contributed modules, and themes

UPDATE:
I posed some new questions, which Harold and Cameron graciously answered:

Does it let you publish in XML syndication? If so, in which formats? RSS 1.0? RSS 2.0? Atom? Others?

XML publication – RSS by default (rss version=”0.92″) Atom by plugin module. (We may already have answered this)

Does it have a spell checker?

Yes by plugin module, requires installation of aspell or ispell.

Does it have a wiki-publishing component?

There is a wiki module but as far as I can tell it is for formatting your posts (IE similar to Textile or Markdown) not really for wiki free flow page creation or permissions. Of course page creation isn’t very difficult and you can set up your permissions to be similar to many wikis. There may be many Drupal sites with Wikis

Can you easily set up multiple weblogs from one account or instalation of the blog publishing software, or must you create multiple accounts or installations?

(also probably already answered)

One Install of Drupal can fairly easily support multiple hosts with different content, and a single host can have multiple accounts all with their own Blog.

Does it support categories? If so, how about hiearchical categories (e.g., Movies / Horror, Movies / Comedies, Movies / Thriller, Books / Fiction, Books / Biographies, and so on)? What about surpressed categories? (That is, in the monthly archive, publish all except the “Breaking News” category)?

Yes (answered in the last catch all section under Taxonomy) Unsure about the surpressed categories.

My favorite new artist/blogger.

Link

Seemingly just for the hell of it, Jonathan Hernandez has created a free blog publishing utility (see headline link) that publishes a blog via Google’s new email application Gmail. Here’s the proof-of-concept blog.

More evidence that nerds need to get out more often. I think I’ll wait to see whether it catches on before I commission a review.

Link

Keeping the pace of these blog platform reviews hopping, here’s the next one about GreyMatter by Joni M. Mueller. I have to say, the review itself is great, very well-written, thorough and honest. Honest to the extent that, althought Joni obviously loves the platform, she admits it may not be for everyone.

My summary of the review: It’s a server-side, PERL-based platform, like Movable Type, which means, among other things, it requires rebuilds of the archives when you make significant changes to the templates. Joni tells how this process early on crashed her then mom-and-pop web host’s servers and she was polited asked to take her web site elsewhere. (Bad blogger! Yikes!) Also, GreyMatter is no longer being actively developed by its principal developer, although there remains an active, die-hard community of plug-in and hack makers. It is also not so easy to install for novices. For those reasons, Joni suggests it’s better for those who like playing around with the underside of the tools and maybe not ideal for most corporate blog installations.

Read her whole review for yourself below. Please offer your feedback on both the review and especially the platform in the Comments thread.

GreyMatter Review

by Joni M. Mueller

General performance. What makes this different/better than other blog publishing platforms?

GreyMatter was one of the first Perl-driven blogging tools out there. That was back when the choices were Livejournal, Blogger and GreyMatter. The difference with GreyMatter was of course its power. At that time, it offered things that the other blog tools did not. GM was written and developed by Noah Grey.

What are some of the best advantages about this platform?

It offers powerful blogging tools like a calendar, searching, comments, IP banning and karma voting, something even today seldom offered in any other blogging tool. Most people probably would never use the karma voting feature of GM, but it might come in handy for a review site (books, DVDs, software, etc.).

One of GM’s best features is its ability to be completely customized. There are a dazzling, if not daunting, array of templates with which to tweak and customize your layout.

What are some of its disadvantages?

Because it is based on Perl, not PHP, the rebuilds that plague other Perl-driven sites also plagues GM. And if your site is hosted on a small server (as mine was way back when), you may end up crashing your web host’s servers. This is not likely to endear you to them, nor GreyMatter to you.

Another disadvantage GreyMatter has is that you have to know your way around an Unix server pretty well and understand completely the difference between an URL and a server path to install GreyMatter. Either that or know someone who does. The installation of GreyMatter is not for the novice.

Also, because GreyMatter is no longer being actively developed by its creator, it will likely stall out at its current version, 1.3. However, there’s a close-knit community of GreyMatter enthusiasts who have taken up the torch and offer a robust and active support forum, where new plugins and hacks are being engineered constantly. GreyMatter is no longer in the forefront of the blogging world, if it ever was, but it’s keeping stride with its bigger competitors and has a very loyal fan base.

What’s the killer feature, if there is one?

There are two features that I think have the “wow” factor above all other blogging tools:

1. As mentioned before, its karma voting feature.
2. GM creates a log, as does MovableType, of all the activity on your site. But unlike MovableType, GreyMatter alerts you to any hacking attempts that occurred and provides the hacker’s ISP. (See Fig. 1)

Fig. 1

What features does it lack or need fixing?

Streamlining the cumbersome installation process would be a plus. There was a very big security issue about a year ago for those running GreyMatter in conjunction with PHP. But the flaw was isolated and patched and it’s just as safe as any other Perl program now.

Where does the publishing engine reside? On its own hosted servers, like Blogger or TypePad? On your own web server, like Movable Type? On your desktop, like Userland Radio? Other? (Outerspace?) What advantages/disadvantages do you see in this approach?

GreyMatter is very much like MovableType in that it must reside on its own server. As mentioned before, you must have a robust web host. When I first installed GreyMatter, my site was hosted by a local ISP, a true “mom and pop” operation. In no short order, GreyMatter apparently ran amok on a rebuild and the ISP operator had to shut the servers down for several hours while he found the offending program (GreyMatter). I was asked, albeit nicely, to find another server from which to run GreyMatter. I am happy to say there are many web hosts out there who can handle GreyMatter and the strain it can sometimes place on a server. There are many, though, who have taken the stance that it is a hoggy program and will not allow it on their servers.

What’s the geek factor on this? How comfortable can non-technical people be with it?

On a scale of 1-10, 10 being the Geekiest of Geeks, I rate GreyMatter a 7 on the difficulty level. There is difficulty in its installation, and further difficulty if you are an HTML novice in dealing with its vast array of templates. Once you’ve mastered both, however, you will find GreyMatter very powerful.

What’s the learning curve? Totally intuitive? Lots of features, thus requiring more time to familiarize yourself with all of it?

The learning curve is a bit steep, but the rewards are worth it in terms of having the ability to create your layout exactly as you want it. Spend a bit of time getting to know GreyMatter’s templates and how they work. The documentation is very informative and easy to understand. It reviews all the tags and their possible uses so you get a good understanding of what you need to set up to get your blog up and running, while you work behind the scenes on the layout.

What’s involved in setting it up? If you’re not technical, do you need help?

While the installation can be troublesome, GreyMatter does have a diagnostic utility that checks to be sure you’ve made your files and directories writable, so if you haven’t it will be easy to go back and fix them so they are. The setup instructions walk you through configuring a hypothetical site so you aren’t left completely in the dark about how to set up GreyMatter. But someone who’s never messed around with FTP and CHMOD or used Tel-Net or the Unix shell commands is going to need to go through some trial (and error) by fire!

Are there platform restrictions? (E.g., PC/Mac, APS vs. Linux servers, SQL Server, etc.)

There aren’t any restrictions that I’m aware of, but you must have a minimum of Perl and access to your cgi-bin folder to install GreyMatter.

Who produces it? Is it an open-source community, a labor-of-love by some programmer, a company with financial backing? What is the likelihood this development team is going to still be at it a year or two from now, providing new features, etc.?

GreyMatter was created and developed by Noah Grey, a photographer. He continued development and support for GreyMatter until around 2002 or early 2003, when he announced that he would no longer be developing it. Then, support for GreyMatter through its forum was taken over by FoshDawg, who maintains the forums and keeps track of the various hacks and mods that continue to be written for GreyMatter as of this writing!

Where is the software developed? How is language support in English (the web site, the manual, the support communities, etc.)? Other languages?

Other languages are supported through mods/hacks found here.

What’s the pricing of it?

GreyMatter is free (although it is not open source), and there are no licensing fees for personal or commercial use.

Is there tech support?

Yes, through the GreyMatter support forum.

Is there a good user manual?

There is an excellent online installation and user manual that ships with GreyMatter. It is very detailed and walks you through the installation and configuration of GreyMatter. It can be viewed here.

Is there a third-party developer community? If so, how active?

GreyMatter has a loyal following and many people are actively developing plugins and hacks for GreyMatter at FoshDawg.net/gm/mods/ and at the Flipped Cracker site, FlippedCracker.net/gm/.

Is there a vibrant user/support/forum community? If so, what are the URLs of such?

Yes, indeed. Since Noah Grey no longer develops GreyMatter, it has been “adopted” by FoshDawg, and its support forum is at GreyMatterForums.com.

Is there support for photos galleries?

GreyMatter natively supports uploading of images and because of its large assortment of customizable templates, it is well-suited to a photoblog, but not “straight out of the box.” Here’s a tutorial on creating a photoblog with GreyMatter.

Is there a built-in Blogroll/Link List kind of feature to manage blogrolls?

Unfortunately, no. However, most people are familiar with and use Blogrolling.com, which a user is certainly free to incorporate into his or her GreyMatter blog.

Can you post via email? Mobile phone/moblog?

Yes, you can post via e-mail only through a hack/plugin found here.

Does it email posts to subscribers who so choose?

Yes, through another hack/plugin found here.

Anything notable in the archive features?

Because of GreyMatter’s array of templates, it’s possible to completely separate your main entries’ style from that of your archives.

Does it support comments? Comment-spam filtering? If so (the latter), what’s the approach?

Comments are natively supported in GreyMatter. It also has a mod/hack that verifies that the commenter’s email address is valid. That can be found here.

Does it support trackback?

Through a plugin, trackbacks and RSS feeds are now supported. One such hack can be found here.

Any idea how well it works on a Mac, with Mozilla or other non-W2K IE platforms?

I have no way to test it on a Mac, but I know that it (the GM control panel; I have no control over your GM-powered website!) renders fine on all the Gecko browsers, in Opera 6 and 7, in Avant and IE6.

Does it pioneer any other new blog features that other platforms don’t have?

GreyMatter is no longer being actively developed, but new plugins and “hacks” are being written for it constantly. Most of these are simply features that allow GreyMatter to keep step with the rest of the blog tools out there, so it’s not breaking any new ground right now.

One plugin/mod/hack that I think is worth having is the spellcheck hack.

Does it support multiple authors? If so, does it have decent permission controls? (E.g., can you limit authors to publish only to draft?)

GreyMatter supports an unlimited number of authors and you can restrict them through the control panel. (See Fig. 2)

Fig. 2

GreyMatter doesn’t have a “draft” setting per se. But it has a unique feature where you can open or close an entry. This causes it not to be shown on your site. And if you decide you want to reopen the entry, you can do so at the click of a button. (See Fig. 3)

Fig. 3

Also, not asked, but worth mentioning is that if you want more than one GM blog on your server, you must install each separately. And there’s no “miniblog” or other way (other than through complicated PHP calls) to run both blogs on one page.

Does it support a simple modular design for page elements? (E.g., when editing templates, are things like blogroll lists, sidebar elements, headers, etc., managed as separate entities, or are they all just in the HTML of a single template?)

Yes, it does. It has separate sections for a “header” and a “footer” so that constant information (such as copyright and colophon information, often contained in a footer) can be written once and called by any page in the GreyMatter template scheme.

Is it well suited for public corporate blogging? Why or why not?

I wouldn’t recommend it over MovableType or WordPress for several reasons. One, because it’s not supported any longer; two, because any PHP-based program (e.g., WordPress, pMachine) will place less load on one’s server and is leaner; and third, and most important, the learning curve on a program like this is fairly steep. You’d need one or two people in the company who are well-versed to set up the journal for all the other users. With other journaling programs being so much more popular and more widely supported, it’s just not something I’d offer as a choice.

Is it well suited for internal corporate blogging? Why or why not?

See above

What other blog platforms have you used that you can compare this to?

I started out using Blogger, then found GreyMatter and was intrigued by its karma voting, calendar and search box. Its closest competitor is MovableType*, as they are both Perl-based programs.

I’ve also dabbled a bit in pMachine*, Geeklog, Mambo*, e107, PHPwcms, TextPattern*, and WordPress*.

*Denotes active testbed site and extensive use.

What else do we need to know about this system?

When it first arrived on the scene, it was an elegant program for those who wanted to roll up their sleeves and dive into the backend of a journaling program. With the advent of Blogger, and the growing popularity of blogs in general, people started wanting something that needed less know-how to get off the ground. MovableType seemed to strike a happy medium between geekishness and wham-bam click and go blogging. It still does, but since that time, there’ve been many more programs flocking to fill in any gaps. For the longest time, it seemed that GM and MT were in a dead heat. Perhaps had Noah Grey continued a more active role in GM, it may be in a different place today, but I could sit around and speculate all day. In sum, GreyMatter is a great program, if you are willing to hunt down the mods and hacks for it. If you like complete control over every single detail and every single piece of output of your blog program, GreyMatter still has that thrill factor.

UPDATE:
I asked the author to add in a few other questions, which she graciously did:

Does it have a spell checker?

Not natively, but you can via a plugin.

Does it have a wiki-publishing component?

No.

Can you easily set up multiple weblogs from one account or installation of the blog publishing software, or must you create multiple accounts or installations?

You must install separate instances of GreyMatter in your cgi-bin folder if you want multiple blogs running GreyMatter on the same server. Also, there is no way to call one GM blog from within another so you can’t have a sideblog or miniblog.

Does it support categories? If so, how about hierarchical categories (e.g., Movies/Horror, Movies/Comedies, Movies/Thriller, Books/Fiction, Books/Biographies, and so on)? What about suppressed categories? (That is, in the monthly archive, publish all except the “Breaking News” category)?

GreyMatter does not natively support categories, but does so only through a plugin. Caveats abound with this plugin as it apparently alters GreyMatter’s underpinnings quite a bit.

Does it let you easily create a “remaindered links” blog-within-a-blog, a la Anil Dash’s Links Blog? (Obviously, you can kludge this in most systems, but I’m wondering if some blog software has it off the shelf.)

No, and there doesn’t appear to be a plugin, mod or hack that will accomplish this either.