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Blogger: The big daddy of hosted applications.  At first glance, Blogger is amazing.  With very little effort, you can start publishing a blog in a matter of minutes, using their templates, their server, even their hosting!  How great is that?

Not so great.  The servers are often down, and the archiving function is notoriously horrible and unreliable.  Often you’ll update your site only to find out that half your archives, or worse, all of them, didn’t transfer.  BlogSpot, their hosting service, is slow, unreliable and unless you pay them, comes with banner ads.  Bah.

LiveJournal: LiveJournal is geared more toward personal diary-style weblogs, and as a tool is pretty reliable.  The problem is there is only so much you can do to customize it, and all comments and (More)-style links lead to their servers with the default LiveJournal format and look.  I hated that.  Also, you can’t embed ANY code in your templates—no Javascript, PHP, Java, nothing.  I hated that as well.

LJ offers their server code as open source, but the installation process is only slightly less painful than being an inmate at the Oswald State Correctional Facility.  You also have to configure your server’s mime-types to serve up .bml, and most people can’t even use an FTP program much less configure Apache!  :)

Radio Userland: Not bad, you can host it just about anywhere you want, but the client sits on your desktop.  I want the ability to be anywhere in the world with a web browser and be able to blog, so Radio was not for me.

Greymatter: Greymatter is almost as hard to install as Movable Type, has a few less features and I think it’s been abandoned, although I’m not sure.  The bottom line here is, if you’re going to install something this hard, you might as well go with…

Movable Type: The grand old man of blogging software.  It has all the features, bells, whistles and extras you could ever want.  It kicks ass.  It’s also more painful to install than Windows XP on a 486sx.  I have never, in all my days, come across software for the web that was more complex to get running since the first time I looked at a Perl script like it was written in French.  I got about 60% of the way through setting it up to look like my old site when I literally threw my hands up and screamed a string of obscenities dirty enough to embarrass a Naval shipyard.  All this led me to…

pMachine:
Oh, sweet sweet pMachine.  This is the installation procedure for pMachine.  ALL of it.

1. Create an MySQL database and remember the name, user and pass.
2. Edit the pm/config.php file, 4 lines, with the path to your MySQL database, the name, user and pass.
3. Upload everything.
4. CHMOD the “images” directory to 777.
5. Run yourserver.com/pm/install.php and follow the VERY simple clicks that lead you through setting up the database.  You don’t have to type anything, just click when it says to click.
6. Delete the install.php file, open your control panel in a browser, and start posting, because YOU ARE DONE.

Sure, you have to tweak a few things, change the preferences to suit you, and you can customize every part of pMachine, but the default installation will serve as a perfectly functional and visually appealing weblog.  Another aspect to pMachine is the support.  The programmer spends a lot of time at the support forum, and answers questions and offers help all the time.  The other users are adept at helping as well.  pMachine is extendable if you know how to program PHP, and many PHP scripts out there can be integrated and added to your site.  By manipulating the templates and playing with some of the features, you can run catalogs, news sites, personal blogs, anything you want.  There are even some hacks out there.  You can import Movable Type posts into pMachine as well. 

If you’re interested, try pMachine for yourself: http://www.pmachine.com.  A non-commercial personal user can use the free version, which has a few limitations.  The Pro version for a single personal user is $45.  They offer hosting as well, with pMachine free pre-installed!  Check it out at http://www.pmachinehosting.com/.

All in all, I heartily recommend the combination of your own web host and pMachine.  You’ll need PHP, MySQL and something to edit the PHP with if you want to customize it.  If your web host doesn’t offer MySQL, there are many out there that do, and at an inexpensive price.  If you are interested in moving your site over to this technology, I’d be glad to be your consultant—I’m cheap, don’t worry!  :) I can be reached at or .

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