solidgone

BlogIt provides a pretty comprehensive blogging platform for PmWiki. The Blogit project page is maintained separately, but the BlogIt tag on this site will provide basic updates, and my current thinking on what's coming up next. I run all my blogs using BlogIt -- you can check them out from the main tab links at the top.

You can also check out the open demo -- the Admin password is "blogadmin", and the Edit password is "blogedit" -- no user name is needed. Feel free to add new blog entries, add comments, login as admin and approve a few comments.

I've used most of the more popular blogging platforms in the past few years, but most of them fell short many areas, but in particular in their ability to provide blogs across multiple domains, running from a single installation of the software. I wanted to maintain a few blogs on very different topics, hence the domain separation, but did not want to have the hassle of maintaining multiple software installations, with numerous skins, extensions, and upgrades that managing a self-hosted blog entails. Not one of the many platforms available was able to do this effectively. There were a few that came close (Lyceum, and Drupal were closest), but each came with their own additional baggage, which in both cases ended up in abandonment.

PmWiki however has a concept of 'farms'. Basically this allows separate wikis, running from a common software installation. There's a lot of flexibility with farms. You can choose to share some things, and keep others separate. So, for my blogs, I keep all content files separate, but maintain a single source for cookbooks, skins, and a few common content files. That way an upgrade is a simple matter. Backups are really simple, since I can just copy files from the server, as there is no database with PmWiki.

After using PmWiki very successfully for a few years over at MR2 Wiki, I decided to succumb to the 'not-invented-here' syndrome, and develop my own blogging platform on top of PmWiki. Thus was BlogIt born.

BlogIt provides the core features demanded of a blogging system, including blog entry, blog management, comment entry and approval, and comment management, and comes with pagelists providing most features provided in other blog systems. Additional features like ping-backs, notifications, RSS feeds, and tag-clouds, can be added using existing Pmwiki cookbooks.

One of the key things that seems to drive users to one blogging platform over another is the availability of skins. Unfortunately this is one of PmWiki's Achilles heels (yes, PmWiki has other weaknesses). So very early on I decided to ensure BlogIt would be able to provide the same look and feel as other blog platforms, and I'm committed to porting over as many of the very best looking skins from other platforms as I can. Looking good is important.

Writing a blog platform is an odd decision when there is such huge competition, but one which I think is easily justified, based on the ability to run multiple blogs from a single install. Spend time writing, not supporting!

Also check out some of the more recent BlogIt related entries below, or the full list of BlogIt related material.

2010

• BlogIt Release 1.6.0 August 14, 2010
• PHP strtotime assumptions with European and American date formats August 12, 2010
• BlogIt Release 1.5.0, Ajaxy Goodness June 13, 2010
• Ajax coming to a BlogIt near you soon... April 30, 2010