Blog-in-a-box? [Archive]

Jason-X

March 29th, 2005, 08:42 AM

Glanz

March 29th, 2005, 09:16 AM

This is the best I have found because it offers more functionality than all the other free blogs, IMO... and it has NO ADS!. Many Debian developers use this also...
http://www.livejournal.com/

defkewl

March 29th, 2005, 10:53 AM

http://jroller.com only has ad in the admin panel.
Java developer use this.

HungSquirrel

March 29th, 2005, 11:31 AM

What possessed them to make a Java-powered weblog?

kassetra

March 29th, 2005, 12:59 PM

Hi all,

Can anybody recommend a good free weblog service. Preferably one that is easy to use and does not have loads of ads.

I've had a good search on the net and found loads. Just wondering what people use and which is the best?

Thanks Jason :D

I personally use blogger (http://www.blogger.com/start) ... and I really like it. I get to choose a style or write my own, and I can post new blogs right from my panel in Ubuntu. :) And as far as I have seen, there are no ads at all, unless you want them.

Jason-X

March 29th, 2005, 02:55 PM

Thanks for the suggestions so far :-)

Has anybody any experience with WORDPRESS (http://wordpress.org/)? It got a really good review in this months Linux Format mag.

fizgig

March 29th, 2005, 03:02 PM

I second blogger.com. They store everything on their site for archival but they can automatically upload it to your hoster via ftp if you want. It's all automatic and very slick. I couldn't believe it when it worked perfectly the first time. You can see my blog here : mattsmith.hostmatrix.org (http://mattsmith.hostmatrix.org) if you'd like - I added some php scripts to randomize elements of the page but it's all powered by blogger.com.

HungSquirrel

March 29th, 2005, 03:07 PM

Wordpress is great, but I think you're looking for free as in not needing hosting as well.

March 29th, 2005, 05:22 PM

Thanks for the suggestions so far :-)

Has anybody any experience with WORDPRESS (http://wordpress.org/)? It got a really good review in this months Linux Format mag.

Wordpress is a program than manages blog content. It runs on a webserver.

You can run a webserver on your box, if you want.

Jason-X

March 29th, 2005, 06:55 PM

I don't want to run a webserver so I guess WORDPRESS is out of the question.

Blogger looks nice and easy. Any more suggestions?

Thanks Jason

DJ_Max

March 29th, 2005, 08:26 PM

What possessed them to make a Java-powered weblog?
Same reason there are PHP powered weblogs. JSP is a great web language.

panickedthumb

March 29th, 2005, 08:45 PM

Wordpress is fantastic. As far as free blogs go, that HAVE hosting, LiveJournal is ok, but Blogger is much better. There are a lot of LiveJournal based services that provide more functionality and flexibility. My qualm with LiveJournal is the massive amount of self-loathing, pretentious, goth teenagers who talk about how they want to kill their parents because they're 13 now, and they DESERVE to stay out til' 1 am.

OK so that's an exaggeration.

kassetra

March 29th, 2005, 09:11 PM

My qualm with LiveJournal is the massive amount of self-loathing, pretentious, goth teenagers who talk about how they want to kill their parents because they're 13 now, and they DESERVE to stay out til' 1 am.

The only exaggeration is that you didn't include in bloody freakin' detail all of the reasons why they *KNOW* that their parents are not letting them stay out late because their parents don't agree with their dark-wannabe-goth-preteen-know-it-all-and-a-half-wisdom.

After all, they're soooooo much older than 13 in vampire years.

panickedthumb

March 29th, 2005, 09:14 PM

*LOL* Glad to know I'm not the only one getting sick of this, kass.

lordofkhemenu

March 30th, 2005, 03:53 AM

I don't want to run a webserver so I guess WORDPRESS is out of the question.

Blogger looks nice and easy. Any more suggestions?

Thanks Jason
Blogger.
If you ever decide to take the leap to a hosted solution where you can have control over everything, go with wordpress.
Or do like me and write your own blogging scripts.

NeoChaosX

March 30th, 2005, 04:46 AM

I've got an LJ, but I try my damndest to avoid into whinning about every goddamned thing. Mostly post happy stuff, tech thoughts and random thoughts in it.

kagou

March 30th, 2005, 06:12 AM

Wordpress is great 8)
there is a free solution to have your blog hosted .. search in wordpress official forum

wulf

March 30th, 2005, 06:15 AM

I've been using Blogger (http://www.blogger.com/) for a couple of years now, providing news for the front page of my two band websites (The Elusive Teeth (http://www.theelusiveteeth.com/) (gig tomorrow evening in South London, UK for any locals!) and Lovesjones (http://www.lovesjones.co.uk/)) and also a list of music I've been listening to (http://www.web-den.org.uk/home/blogger.php). It's generally a really good service (although the control panel seems to have an error right at the moment :oops: ), although all three of those are using FTP to transfer the blogs to my own webspace. There is an option of hosting the site via Blogger but I haven't used that.

Recently, I've also set a couple of new blogs running, one for my church (http://www.web-den.org.uk/cgi-bin/blosxom) and the other for my own meanderings (http://www.web-den.org.uk/cgi-bin/wulfblosxom). Both of these use the Perl based Blosxom (http://www.blosxom.com/) package, but that does require hosted web-space running Perl, and a bit more technical skill to set up.

If you want full control over a system, while keeping the individual entries in simple text files, I highly recommend Blosxom but Blogger is also great and much easier to get running. I haven't tried packages such as WordPress, as this also introduces the need for running a database into the mix.

Wulf

HungSquirrel

March 30th, 2005, 09:12 AM

defkewl

March 30th, 2005, 10:43 AM

Thanks for the suggestions so far :-)

Has anybody any experience with WORDPRESS (http://wordpress.org/)? It got a really good review in this months Linux Format mag.

I wouldn't recommend Wordpress. The templating has PHP in it which sometimes confuses beginner. Why don't you try Movabletype (http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/) instead?

wulf

March 30th, 2005, 11:24 AM

I couldn't get Blosxom working for the life of me.

Edit: Nice blog, wulf. I guess Blosxom is powerful if you can get it to work! By the way, you forgot a </em> at the end of your Triumphal Entry post. It's emphasizing everything below it. ;)
Thanks for pointing that out - many eyes make it hard for the bugs to hide. Having corrected the problem, it does demonstrate one small problem with Blosxom - it takes the date the file was last updated as the blog entry date (mucking around with the permanent link address!). I'll have to fix that one later.

What was the problem you had getting Blosxom up and working? I did have to do a bit of fiddling around in order to figure out where to put the various files (and again when I wanted to run a second, independent blog) but it was fairly straightforward in the end.

Wulf

eBopBob

March 30th, 2005, 11:43 AM

I would highly recommend Blogger. It's a great system, is free and does not contain any ads which is great in my opinion. It's also very easy to get going, and use ... though unfortunately there are still some problems though I hear they're being ironed out.

I've never used their hosted service mind you... it's all uploaded to my server.

HungSquirrel

March 30th, 2005, 01:01 PM

What was the problem you had getting Blosxom up and working?
Accessing the CGI file gave me the text of the script rather than rendering the blog. I imagine it was a problem with my Apache config, but I wasn't in the mood to pursue it further.

totalshredder

March 30th, 2005, 02:14 PM

I recomend Blogger as well! Very, very nice site, you can change everything you want, get money off the ads. Awesome!

Also, yahoo is about to put out a blogging service called Yahoo 360 (http://360.yahoo.com/index_beta.html). It's invitation only, or something like that; It looks promising! Although, the sample page makes it look very constricting, doesn't look like a pure blogging service, but that's cool!

Luke

panickedthumb

March 30th, 2005, 08:50 PM

I wouldn't recommend Wordpress. The templating has PHP in it which sometimes confuses beginner. Why don't you try Movabletype (http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/) instead?
Movable type has licensing issues I don't agree with personally, but beyond that-- I find it strange that you think MT is easier than WP. I used MT for a couple years, but converted to WordPress and found it MUCH MUCH easier. I guess it's whether you think Perl or PHP. I apparently think PHP.

wulf

March 31st, 2005, 03:34 AM

Accessing the CGI file gave me the text of the script rather than rendering the blog. I imagine it was a problem with my Apache config, but I wasn't in the mood to pursue it further.
Did you have it in your cgi-bin directory, and were other perl scripts working there (a simple "Hello World" script would do to test)?

If it becomes relevant to try it again, let me know, as I've got a working installation things can be compared with.

Wulf

HungSquirrel

March 31st, 2005, 07:35 AM

Did you have it in your cgi-bin directory, and were other perl scripts working there (a simple "Hello World" script would do to test)?

If it becomes relevant to try it again, let me know, as I've got a working installation things can be compared with.

Wulf
When I had it in my cgi-bin directory, I got a 404 error. I even went to far as to chmod cgi-bin recursively to 777 and still couldn't access the file.

I'm not worried about it. I'll just use Wordpress. I like it, and I can understand PHP much better than Perl. The only thing I don't like about Wordpress is the need for a database. One problem upgrading the database between Wordpress versions and all my old entries are toast...

wulf

March 31st, 2005, 09:51 AM

One problem upgrading the database between Wordpress versions and all my old entries are toast...
Is there no migration tool? How complex is the table structure? Of course, that is exactly the reason I'm a big fan of plain text files for storing information!

Wulf

HungSquirrel

March 31st, 2005, 03:47 PM

I assume there is a migration tool, but phpBB taught me not to trust them.

defkewl

March 31st, 2005, 09:07 PM

The reason why MT is much easier because it uses tag instead of PHP code in the template.

panickedthumb

March 31st, 2005, 10:45 PM

I see your point, but I thought htat the mt tags were so freakin' weird, that the PHP in WordPress was easier to understand.

defkewl

April 1st, 2005, 04:03 AM

Some people I know (especially newbies) prefer MT on top of WP because of that reason. If you already understand HTML, than understanding MT tags won't be that difficult.

Jason-X

April 1st, 2005, 01:11 PM

Thanks for all the suggestions everybody. Looks like I'll give blogger a go.

Cheers Jason :)

jdonnell

April 1st, 2005, 06:13 PM

I've just started coding my own blogging site. It's still very crude but check it out if you'd like.
www.blogbloc.com (http://www.blogbloc.com)

It's not ready for heavy use it, but I couldn't resist a shameless plug :)

P.S. - I'd have to cast my vote for livejournal.com at the moment. It really depends what your looking for though. I like the communal feel of livejournal as opposed to the blogger way.

ubuntu-geek

April 1st, 2005, 09:29 PM

Watch this space.. Each forum user will have their own journal/blog in about a week ;)

jdonnell

April 1st, 2005, 11:17 PM

Watch this space.. Each forum user will have their own journal/blog in about a week ;)

If your implicitly responding to me then you misunderstood me. My site isn't my blog, it allows users to create their own blog which is what the OP was looking for. However, it's not really ready yet, but I couldn't resist :)

kassetra

April 2nd, 2005, 02:54 PM

Thanks for all the suggestions everybody. Looks like I'll give blogger a go.

Cheers Jason :)

I think you'll really like Blogger. :)

kassetra

April 2nd, 2005, 02:55 PM

If your implicitly responding to me then you misunderstood me. My site isn't my blog, it allows users to create their own blog which is what the OP was looking for. However, it's not really ready yet, but I couldn't resist :)

No, he was giving you some clues to anyone wanting to blog in general about some new forum features... :)

benplaut

May 29th, 2005, 09:05 PM

i'm thinking that i might want to join the blogging race, so i'm looking for a good blog site with no or few ads.

which do you recommend?

Mez

May 29th, 2005, 09:07 PM

i'm thinking that i might want to join the blogging race, so i'm looking for a good blog site with no or few ads.

which do you recommend?
If you want to host your own, use wordpress (http://wordpress.org/)

If you dont want to use it, use LiveJournal (http://www.livejournal.com)