Drupal?
By admin on Tuesday, November 18 2008, 01:11 - blog - Permalink
I decided to move off WordPress due to some security concerns and other issues.
- Plain WordPress doesn't do multiple blogs (there are several hacks, but they are immature). I want to host at least 6 blogs, without having to keep each one upgraded separately -- each of our current 3 blogs used 11 plug-ins last time I counted. Also, it's insecure. It's sadly ironic that they claim "WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. -- but their XML export ("WRX") is invalid XML.
- I looked at Expression Engine, but don't like the license.
- I looked at Movable Type, but found it complicated and problematic, and they really only offer a few themes, with color/banner graphic variations (in 2 and 3 column variants, though!). Also, their support system is pretty broken; they offer corporate support, which requires payment, and they have 2 different fora, but only one of them appears to be available for unpaid users. Very confusing, and I found a bunch of bugs (in the site, not in MT); also, I like to do a lot of testing, and then migrate from test to live, and they lack good support for moving blogs around.
- Textpattern looked good, but I quickly found significant breakage and incompleteness.
- I looked at WordPress MU, thinking perhaps I'd live with the security risks -- after all, this content is public. Unfortunately, WordPress' built-in SSL support requires the HTTPS URLs to match the HTTP URLs (except the scheme), but I don't have 6 free IPs for blog management. No, I don't want to use funky ports to make the SSL vhosts work. The Admin-SSL plug-in can use a different SSL prefix ("Shared SSL") with regular WordPress, but not under WordPress MU. I reported this as a bug, but don't expect a fix soon.
- Now I'm looking at Drupal, which is supposed to be very flexible (and complicated); I suspect it can handle my SSL requirements, but don't know how good its blogging features are. Goldman stalled my investigation, but now that my job hunt is winding down, I should have a bit more time to figure it out.
- If Drupal cannot do it, I will look at EE & MT again. If I cannot (bring myself to?) get them working, I'll probably stick with a bunch of separate WordPress blogs for now.
Very frustrating!
Comments
Chris,
What about Habari? It's an up and coming blogging engine, which supports multi-site out of the box? Give it a read. http://wiki.habariproject.org/en/Multisite
Tony
Tony,
Habari looks cool, but a bit immature -- in particular, they seem pretty confused about the license.
I got Drupal installed and downloaded Habari, and I'll look at both -- thanks.
Im a fan of Drupal for several reasons, but Im not sure it can do what you want with SSL. Ive had trouble understanding what it can and cannot do with SSL for my own Drupal 5 installations (which are separate installations on shared hosting, also with one IP).
I do believe you could have both HTTP and/or HTTPS through the same installation, and have several blogs (using the Drupal core Blog module) running from that. In the scenario Im describing, all of the blogs would have the same base URL like http://www.jaharmi.com/blog/username but are otherwise separate (and should have individual syndication feeds).
For all of my current sites, though, I have one or more user accounts posting stories with the Drupal core Story module (typically with MarsEdit through the Drupal core BlogAPI module), and that acts as a single top-level blog. I dont use the Blog module.
Even though Drupal 6 has been out for months, the lack of updated modules has been a drawback compared to Drupal 5. That has started to change and cool/important modules like CCK and Views are now available for it. Drupal does have a history, thanks to its philosophy that the drop is always moving, of eschewing backwards compatibility and that affects module development. (I sometimes frame it as the Apple of CMSes.)
If youre considering Drupal, you might want to look at the Acquia Drupal distribution. It is from the founder of the Drupal project and it bundles in valuable, supported, and well-maintained modules that a lot of sites would use anyway.
HTH.
Hello,
Maybe you could check out Dotclear: http://dotclear.org/ Version 2 has multiblog capabilities.
Lionel,
But how's its SSL, security, and multi-user support?
Also, this blog post about Dotclear: http://inspireme.lasoeurkaramazov.net/post/2008/10/27/Blog-engine-Dotclear-21-is-out
The very new Dotclear English-speaking blog: http://dotclear.org/blog/
And the English section in the Dotclear 2 forum: http://forum.dotclear.net/viewforum.php?id=18
As for me, I still like WordPress, but since you're apparently in a mood for testing things out it seems Dotclear shows some promises. :-)
Lionel,
No hits on 'ssl' in their search form. Pass.
OK, I guess I won't get my Dotclear commission, then ;-)
Good luck in your platform quest!
I am likely to move to drupal with my loan modification site soon. I recommend you google the art lab and look at their drupal tuts to help you on your project.