Back in December of 2007, I decided that I wanted to try something new and fresh with my website. I was also getting tired of the standard websites with their uniform look and I didn’t really feel like I was getting any benefit from it. So, I did a bit of research and decided that I wanted to try a blogging platform and after a bit more research, I chose Wordpress.

Before I fully converted to the blog, I was receiving approximately 900 unique visitors each month.

• By January, one month after I converted, I was receiving 1300 unique visitors.
• By February it had grown to 2500 unique visitors
• In March, it had grown to 4000 unique visitors in the month.

That is four times the traffic I started with!

So, let’s look at the top five reasons why you need a blog (in my biased opinion, WordPress is the way to go so I will reference WP throughout this post but you could use any blogging platform to achieve these same benefits…):

1. Blogs are User-Friendly and Very Easy to Use

The upside to having blog software as opposed to a website is that it is very user-friendly. The blog uses a GUI, or a graphic-user interface, which means that that everything that you may need to do is laid out in simple to understand graphics. The blogging software also conforms to the standards of most other software programs. For example, the graphic icons you see in Microsoft Office programs are very similar to the graphics you’ll see inside of your blog.

The reason that this is so important is that YOU can update your OWN website and you don’t need to pay high prices in web design fees to do so! There is no messing around with HTML code, you can avoid having a dull, lifeless site that people only visit occasionally and instead, you can update it yourself and give people a reason to return again and again and again.

The other upside to this is that when you want something changed quickly, you can do so. You no longer have to wait on a web designer or a virtual assistant, you can just pop in to the dashboard and update the page you need to make changes to and click save and boom – you’re done!

Making regular posts is also easy to do. In a few, short clicks and then some keystrokes for the body of your post, you can have fresh, new content on your blog immediately. If you’re feeling particularly creative one day, you can write a series of posts and save them all to post on future dates. For me, I will write eight or nine blog entries at a time and save them to post one or two days apart. This is also useful if you are going on vacation. In February, my husband and I went to the Dominican for a vacation and before I left, I wrote blog entries to cover the week I was gone and just posted them in advance. On the days that I specified, my blog entries showed up on the blog!

2. Blogs Are Easy to Navigate

All blogs follow a fairly standard style of formatting and navigation. Although each template may look different, they all contain the same standard elements. When I visit a blog, I always know where to go to see Recent Posts. I also know that on the majority of blogs, I will be able to find a place to subscribe to the blogs feed. A feed is simply a syndication of your blog entries. That syndicated text is then sent out to your blog visitors feed readers and is sent out to the search engines, etc. This is part of the reason that blogging is so powerful in getting people to your site.

Have you ever visited a website where every menu has been different and each sidebar contained different text depending on where you were on the website? Those types of websites are confusing and they don’t lead the website visitor where they should be going. With blogging software, it remains standard and is always updating itself. When you make a change on one sidebar, it automatically updates on every other sidebar which eliminates any sort of confusion for your website visitors.

A great book I want to recommend is Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think.” Even if you don’t design websites, you want to read this book. A lot of the reasons that I love blogs are outlined in his usability section. He references making websites more functional by following his principles but what is so great is that a blog already conforms to many of his standards.

3. People Can Subscribe to Your Blog and Stay Current

Now, I want to explain what RSS is first. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. What it is is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts. People who are into blogging will use your RSS feed to do a few things:

• They may subscribe to receive a daily digest of new content. Think of how powerful this is in terms of keeping you in touch with your target market. If someone receives constant, updated messages from you, you are always in their line of sight and they will see what you are up to, new products or services you are launching and how much knowledge you have on your chosen subject.

• They may also add you to their feed reader. I have a program that I use called Feed Demon and this software program tracks all of the blogs I am interested in by capturing and updating the feed that comes from the blog. Each day I can open up this software program and have an instant summary of every blog I have subscribed to and I can review what it is people are talking about. This allows me to stay current without having a thousand bookmarks in my internet browser or trying to remember which blogs I liked to read. The same is true for your visitors. They want a quick, easy way to be reminded that you exist and that you are posting things that they want to know about.

Normal sites don’t do this for you unless you are putting out a monthly ezine that contains all of your business updates. By having the blog, you can nearly cut out the monthly ezine and just let the blog do the work for you!

4. Search Engines Love Them and They Are Content Managers

In fact, it’s so easy to build content on your blog that I have actually created info-products based on content I had blogged about over the past year. Info-products become simple to do because you aren’t creating fresh, new content each and every time. What you blog about could become an article which could turn into an e-book. Blogging gets you into the habit of writing and creating which then allows you to easily and effortlessly create info-products.

Your visitors will also love this because when they show up on your site looking for assistance in your chosen profession, they can find a whole archive of great content. Most of my blogging clients will archive their past newsletters or e-zines on their blogs so that their clients can read past issues without having to download PDFs or visit thirteen or fourteen different web pages.

Search engines love blogs for a number of reasons. Number one, they love the fact that fresh, new content is being posted all of the time. Even if you are only updating it once a week, you will still see the benefits from it. Each and every time you post something to your blog, the search engines are automatically pinged and if you have pinging software installed, which is free and simple to use, it’ll automatically ping the different services that should be pinged.

Number two, search engines love hyperlinks and trackbacks. Hyperlinks are links to other people’s websites, blog entries, audio files, etc. and track backs are special links from someone else’s blog entry that let the other person know you’ve blogged about him or her. It also posts YOUR entry on their site for other people to read. This is how blogging also becomes so viral.

5. They Become an Active Networking Source for Your Business

For me, I have met a number of brand new people through my blog. Some of these people became clients, others were just frequent readers that became friends and others asked me to collaborate with them on special projects. By having a blog, you can become a place where people visit to learn about what it is you are writing about but also so that they can meet you, get to know you and someday work with you. You can build a community and allow other people to meet through you which then allows people to talk about you and get your name out there.

If you think of standard networking, you think of people showing up to an event for about an hour, rushing through the crowds trying to get business cards and then leaving the event and never really having a true feeling of connection. I’m sure we’ve all experienced this. Blogging gives your interested parties a place to come to learn about you. They can start to see how you both would benefit from knowing each other and they will be more apt to approach you over time. This is a much more effective way to network and you don’t need to worry about your business card being thrown in the trash.

Another way that it becomes a networking tool is when you reach out to other people’s blogs. Once you start blogging, you will quickly realize that the whole world is blogging and there are many great things to be read. By visiting other people’s blogs and leaving comments on their posts, you will do two things: one, you will introduce yourself in a non-threatening or non-imposing way to someone you may not have wanted to just e-mail in the past and two, by showing that you have interest in that subject on their blog, you’ll gain interested visitors who share similar interests.

Erin Blaskie is the owner of Business Services ETC, The VA Coach and VA Matchmaker.  She services internet marketers, coaches, speakers and solopreneurs with their everyday operational needs which frees up their time to focus on the big picture.  She can be found at www.erinblaskie.com.

Sometimes, writing blog entries via a web form just doesn’t work. That’s why I’m looking forward to Mariner Software’s new blogging client called WinJournal. The WinJournal name might be familiar since Mariner Software also created MacJournal.

Currently in beta testing mode, WinJournal offers journaling, blogging and podcasting in one application. The blogging capabilities work with all popular Windows blogging software including: MovableType, TypePad, Wordpress, Live Journal, Blogger and Windows Spaces. WinJournal also allows you to publish blog entries to a web server via FTP so it can be used as a web site editor as well. WinJournal can also be used to write entries stored locally.

Other options include: wiki style links, spell check, auto save, security/encryption, WYSIWYG text editor, calendar, multiple journals, labels, full screen mode and tabs. There is also a skins manager to change the look an feel of the WinJournal software. This is a good thing since the default skin under XP isn’t so good.

Other popular desktop blogging software includes: Qumana, Etco, MarsEdit, w.bloggar, BlogJet, Rocket Post 2 and Zoundry. Thomas has a short review on desktop and web based browsers at OMB.

Adding Technorati tags to posts has never been easy in TypePad. In fact, I created a little movie a while back so that clients could watch it as many times as they like.

But now TypePad has added a Technorati Tags field near the bottom the New Post page. Just separate your tags with commas and you’re all set. No need to muck around with the Edit HTML tab.

While this is a good solution for most users, not being able to get under-the-hood does frustrate me on a few points:

• I don’t like to brand my tags as “Technorati Tags.” I prefer the more agnostic “Tags.”
• I like the flexibility of sending those links to places other than the Technorati tag pages. I.e., a tag on Search Engine Optimization could point to my page on SEO at my own Web site.
• I prefer pipes over commas. (I know, small thing.)

However, if you’re a TypePad user and you’ve wanted to take advantage of tags (which help drive additional traffic to your site) without learning HTML, this is a great solution for you.

Now, what to do with my movie?

Many blogs offer email subscriptions to their blog, usually via Feedblitz or Bloglet. As I mentioned in a previous post, now AWeber, more well-known for its autoresponder service, is also offering an email broadcasts of RSS feeds.

What I like about service is how customizable it is; you can create an HTML template that complements your blog design. AWeber also offers a series of predesigned templates for you to choose from. HTML and plain text versions are automatically generated. Confirmed opt-in is required, so you’ll only be sending these emails to people who really want them, keeping you safe from charges of spamming.

There’s no additional fee for this service for people who are already AWeber members, but membership is $20/mo. (AWeber memberships also offer powerful autoresponders and the ability to publish email newsletters.)

I especially like the flexibilty you have with the layout and the ability to add messages to outgoing emails. In the example above, you can see that I created links to articles on my Web site. Through the admin system these messages are easy to change, even if you’re not comfortable with HTML. There is also the ability to track clickthrus and view other reports. You can also choose how many posts will appear in a single email broadcast.
Two things I don’t like about the current AWeber offering, however:

1. You can’t choose between full text and excerpt; the system automatically limits your email with a “Read more…” link.
2. Images and links you may have created in your feed do not carry into the email version.

Tom Kulzer, the CEO and Founder of AWeber says both these features are being considered for a future release.

One other thing that may work against AWeber is the fact that Feedblitz now offers many if not all of these feed related services, plus others, for just $4.95/mo. Although I haven’t yet tested Feedblitz, it appears to offer a compelling alternative.

Announced during MacWorld earlier this week was the release of iWeb, a new part of iLife ‘06.

iWeb includes blogging software and integrates seemlessly into the rest of iLife, which includes iPhoto, iMovie and iTunes, among iOthers. By using the rest of the suite, bloggers will have drag-and-drop options, such as dragging an iTunes playlist into the blog. Of course, links will be automatically created to the iTunes music store where visitors can purchase said songs.

Although the software seems to be targeted to personal bloggers rather than business bloggers, a lot of creative types such as ad agencies are likely to give this platform a try, giving it a certain inevitable buzz.

Will iWeb impact the blogosphere? I don’t know…did the iPod change the way we listen to music?

I got this through Wired, which had an opportunity to put iWeb through its paces.

I
was setting up a client’s new blogs in TypePad this afternoon when I
got this error. You may wonder why I’m still using TypePad for blogging
clients…I’m wondering the same thing myself.

What’s more frustrating is the only option is to click the OK button. How about a "Not OK" button?

This is just a day after TypePad users received an email from TypePad offering a
rebate on 0, 15, 30 or 45 days, depending on how much the user was
affected.

While we are not done with our work, and
there is always the chance of outages on any web service, we believe
that the worst performance is behind us, and it is now time to focus on
how we can make these problems up to you.

Well, I
was debating between 15 or 30, but I’m glad I held off. Now I’ll take
the full 45, though I’m not  sure that will make a difference.  Business bloggers need a platform they can rely on, not a rebate when it goes down.

This feels like a dysfunctional relationship where I keep on hoping my significant other will change and everything will be fine. And we all know how those turn out.

Update (2 days later): SixApart’s CEO Barak Berkowitz provides more details. He posted his Message from the CEO to the TypePad blog and also sent it in an HTML email to customers:

Dear Debbie,  

As you might know, some of our users have been experiencing slow performance with the TypePad service over the past few weeks…

Pretty nice. To back up a minute… we (meaning a bunch of contributors to this blog) are taking partial credit for these blogged
responses from SixApart. We started complaining vociferously on
Wednesday Oct. 26th (first me and then Tris Hussey, Rich Brooks, Toby Bloomberg and Paul Chaney) about the recent slowness and outages with TypePad, SixApart’s popular hosted blogging service.

The result? SixApart co-founders Mena and Ben Trott posted a reponse,
the first real explanation we’ve gotten from the company after several
weeks of problems with TypePad. The number of TypePad blogs and the
activity on them (the good news) has outstripped their server capacity
(the bad news), they tell us. They’re working to move TypePad to a new
data center (which hasn’t been going smoothly).

Moral of the story? The blogosphere works. You kvetch enough. You get everybody’s attention. (Addendum: we’re quite pleased with the effect of our buzz campaign.) Now let’s  hope they can fix the problems…

Backstory
I sent Anil Dash
(a SixApart VP) several emails yesterday begging him to "listen up" and
to make lemonade out of lemons, so to speak. Anil is a friend and
colleague. I suggested he get the top dogs at 6A to acknowledge the
recent problems and address them more transparently than the cryptic
messages we get on 6A’s Status Weblog about "temporary service degradation."

He listened.

Another
takeaway… there are many channels of communication. You need to use a
combination of public and private ones. The blogosphere is a very very
public place. It’s not right for everything.

As many active bloggers out there know, TypePad has been paaaaaaaainfully slow lately. If you have a TypePad account, posting has been somewhere between difficult and impossible.

Here at Business Blog Consulting
(the other BBC), behind the locked doors of our Yahoo Group, there’s
been a lot of chatter about leaving TypePad for greener pastures. 

Debbie Weil, over at BlogWrite for CEO’s and a fellow BBC blogger, takes TypePad to task with her post Listen Up SixApart: some of your TypePad customers may switch. Because Debbie’s, well Debbie Weil, Anil Dash from Six Apart actually responded on her blog.

I know that other BBC contributors plan on posting their own
thoughts both to BBC and to their own blogs in the next 24 hours, and
as I get a list of those posts I’ll update this post.

For me, this reminds me of the mid-90’s when AOL’s email went down for about two days.
People lost it. Businesses claimed they were being ruined. Congress
held hearings on what could be done. And Steve Case said something to
the effect that it showed how important AOL was to American Business.
(At least that’s how I remember it.)

I believe the lesson business owners learned from that is that
whatever your communication medium is, it needs to be rock-solid.
Piggy-backing your communications on a consumer product like AOL is no
way to run a real business.

Until recently I recommended TypePad as a platform for business bloggers…especially compared to Blogger,
which doesn’t have half the bells and whistles TypePad offers. However,
as more businesses turn to blogging as a legitimate marketing tool they
are going to expect enterprise-level solutions…not “waiting on
TypePad.com” messages.

The recent problems with TypePad and slowdowns at Technorati
show that blogging is growing at a mind-boggling rate; businesses will
continue to flock to it, and so will dollars. Whether TypePad is going
to be part of the solution for business bloggers or an also-ran will be
determined by how they respond to their current problems.

Update: SixApart’s Anil Dash responds.

As I wrote here and here a few weeks ago, I’m one of thousands running a business blog on TypePad. The service has been excruciatingly slow of late. (Just now I thought I’d tear my hair out while waiting for this post to Save.) Sometimes it’s down altogether.

Don’t get me wrong. This is not a “trash 6A” blog entry. It’s a please please please listen to your customers before it’s too late message. The buzz is building. There’s talk of moving some high-profile blogs (including this one) to WordPress or another platform.

My advice? Post fast. Post fresh. Be transparent. The blogosphere is gonna bite if you don’t. And get something up on your Status Blog (which, BTW, doesn’t have an archive so it’s conspicuously not quite a blog) or on Mena’s Corner that acknowledges the problem.

C’mon guys. We love you! Don’t disappoint.

SixApart is one of the companies largely responsible for the migration of blogging from personal musings to the small business and corporate world. Their hosted TypePad service has been wildly popular amongst professionals. IBM legend Irving Wladawsky-Berger uses TypePad (instead of IBM’s blogging platform); Seth Godin uses it. Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing, uses it. Intuit’s QuickBooks uses it here and here. The Air Conditioning Contractors of America uses it. This blog uses it. And lots more.

So when the TypePad service goes down, as it did earlier this week, it’s a pretty big deal. Lots of business blogs disappeared for hours. And if you’re the publisher of one of them, as I am, it strikes fear in your heart. Has the damn thing been swallowed up? All those thousands of words gone forever?

I was in a panic to put it politely. For me, and thousands of other customers, this was a crisis. Frustratingly, there was scant information at the time on SixApart’s supposedly real-time status blog.

Well, I’m delighted to report that 6A now gets this crisis blogging thing (see above). They’re talking to us. They’re telling us, candidly, what happened:

Both Monday’s and Tuesday’s outages were the result of hardware failures…

That’s really all customers want. We care more about being kept in the loop than about how bad the news is.

It’s just that we want the information in real-time, during the crisis. Tell us something, anything immediately. Acknowledge that there’s a problem (even a big problem) and that you’re working on it. But do it in plain English. Get the CEO to jump on the "status blog," if necessary. Don’t for heaven’s sake leave it up to your techies to pen one sentence about a "temporary service degradation." That’s jargon. It’s not communication.

Hard to do in a crisis, I know. But it’s the whole point of having a blog as a channel for real-time communication. To turn your customers, who are momentarily in a panic, into your evangelists. And who better than SixApart to model how this should be done. Thanks guys, for being responsive to my comments.

Note: turns out you can back up the contents of a TypePad blog into a file and download it to your computer. I just did it here. Now that would be a good tip to give TypePad customers, wouldn’t it? Doesn’t reflect badly on 6A and is a gentle reminder that these are just machines after all.

I’ve been playing with my new WordPress.com blog—ProBlogging How to—for a while now.  First thoughts, I really like it.  Qumana connects in a cinch.  I’ve been cross-posting and re-posting without problems.  The site isn’t getting much traffic yet, so trackback and comment management isn’t something that I’ve had to deal with.  On the down side, the admin/dashboard has been a bit sluggish at times and I would like to edit the template (I did choose a standard one, and really like it).  Beyond that, looks good.  Heck it is beta, gotta cut Matt some slack!

 

I’m very excited to have another serious blog hosting option out there.  Yes, I still like Blogware.  I also think TypePad and Bryght are solid too.  I am curious about the WordPress.com business model, though.  Is is going to be free? (Way unlikely, IMHO)  Ad-supported?  Tiered?  I’d love to know.  Matt, ping me … let me know, please?

I just received an invitation to set up a WordPress.com (com, not org) blog. I did, and I like it. The interface is clean and more compact than the admin interface I’m used to. They have several decent looking skins, though I don’t like the fact you can’t access the source code. At least, I didn’t find a way to do it. But, then again, I didn’t spend much time on it either.

This is a hosted version of their platform, similar to how SixApart does it with Typepad. Of course, it’s free, just like the server-side version. It is currently by invitation only however. Just submit your email addy and they will extend an invitation to you at some point I feel sure.

I’d be interested to feedback from those of you who’ve tried it out, especially if you have a more in-depth review. I’m just not an in-depth review kind of guy. Heh.

I’m trying to decide if Blog-zilla is for real or a some type of blogspam program. I’d love to hear your thoughts, particularly if you’ve tried the thing.

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.

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 us