Sun, 10 Nov 2002 07:26:05
And another follower comes into the fold
So Lee (Right-Thinking from the Left Coast) called me and said something about hating Blogger and BlogSpot and needing to get the hell away from there pretty quick. He said it in words that were a LOT harsher than the words I’ve used here. They involved bad, naughty words.
I run a server, so I offered to host for my buddy. And, since I’m a masochist, I also offered to install and configure some blogging software for him. Yeah, I’m nice like that. OK, truth is I love this crap—I’m a geek, what can I say? I enjoy looking at a blank document and after a few hours work, turning it into a fully-working website. I like the line-by-line code tweaking, the obsessive pouring over of the CSS file. It’s fun. Not like do-heroin-and-shoot-up-a-school fun, or I-hired-a-Thai-boyhooker fun, but fun nonetheless. I have done a fair amount of research into blogging tools and content management systems. I have used Blogger, LiveJournal, I explored Radio Userland, Greymatter and Movable Type and finally settled on pMachine.
Since a couple of readers have written Lee asking about the new setup of his site, he asked me to write a little something up about the whole thing. I’ll just tell you, one by one, my impressions of each tool.
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.
- Create an MySQL database and remember the name, user and pass.
- Edit the pm/config.php file, 4 lines, with the path to your MySQL database, the name, user and pass.
- Upload everything.
- CHMOD the “images” directory to 777.
- 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.
- 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 .
Posted by JimK at 07:26 AM on November 10, 2002
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#2 Posted by Steven Den Beste 
on 11/10 at 05:22 PM -
You might find this article interesting:\r
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http://www.microcontentnews.com/articles/blogware.htm\r
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It goes into greater depth on this and covers far more alternatives.
#3 Posted by Pontifex on 11/10 at 07:05 PM -
I’ve installed Moveable Type twice now --once for my site, once for a friend—and talked a friend through a thrid installation. The first time was frustrating, but now that I understand the process, it’s a cakewalk.\r
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Of course, it all depends on your level of experience. Somebody that has some basic understanding of Telnet, configuring mySQL, and using CHMOD will have an easier time with MT (or pMachine, for that matter) than somebody who doesn’t.
#4 Posted by Sean Kirby 
on 11/10 at 07:23 PM -
I’m currently in day two of an installation of Moveable Type. I’ve already moved past swearing, screaming, thrashing, sobbing, and rocking back and forth in the fetal position. Now I think I’m making some progress, the new blog should be up soon.
#5 Posted by Bill Peschel on 11/10 at 07:39 PM -
Thanks for the information (courtesy of Instapundit). I’ve been thinking about getting off Blogger for awhile, although I haven’t had the issues with it (except for the archives), but I don’t have enough time to fiddle with MT and haven’t heard of pmachine at all. I’ll check it out.
#6 Posted by Mean Dean on 11/11 at 02:47 AM -
MovableType is not hard to install, if you know where to look.\r
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Doesn’t hurt to look here either.
#7 Posted by paul on 11/11 at 03:51 AM -
one solution for MT: just try to finish it, and then set up the blog. take notes at where it tells you that access is denied, then memorize what chmod and chown can do ... that’s how i got mine set up—trial and error. i’d try it, get an error, fix the error and try it again, get another error ... it was all good in the end but i tell you, someone could make serious money putting a good GUI on that installer.
#8 Posted by Clint on 11/11 at 05:52 AM -
I’ve been testing several systems on our intranet and I have to agree. pMachine is not only the easiest to install, but look at all those features! Impressive. My biggest gripe about MT is you have to rebuild your site every time there is the most miniscule change. I kept reflexively looking for the rebuild button in pMachine. That alone make it worth it in my book.
#9 Posted by Bill Peschel on 11/11 at 06:29 PM -
Update: I downloaded pmachine and spent the morning getting it set up. The screw-ups were:\r
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Using a version of pkunzip from 1993 to unpackage the zip file. DL’ed a newer version.\r
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Unable to get pmachine to recognize the database (you have to set four parameters, such as your site name, password, database name from mySQL). Found, after much trial and error, that I had to put in “localhost” instead of my site address. Found answer on a posting at pmachine’s forum.\r
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Once those were taken care of, the installation went like a breeze. All done without me doing anything more than click on next and telling them my name and e-mail and some other information.\r
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Only problem now is that the syndication page doesn’t work right (the “index.xml” file). Not sure what to do, but it doesn’t really matter. Everything else works fine, and I’m experimenting with the features before going live with this.\r
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Thanks for the headsup!
#10 Posted by kyle on 11/20 at 06:13 PM -
Did you happen to look into nucleus? (http://www.nucleuscms.org/) or cafelog/b2 (http://cafelog.com)\r
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I’m looking at going with either of those, or pMachine, and can’t decide.
#11 Posted by JimK on 11/20 at 07:26 PM -
Being a masochist, I had to try Nucleus just for the Blogger import feature. I installed and set it up in about 10 minutes, pretty easy, and got the import tool from the site. That took a little longer to figure out, mainly because GOOD OLD BLOGGER WAS ACYING LIKE A DRUNKEN COUSIN AT AN OPEN-BAR WEDDING RECEPTION...but I digress. I in fact got it to work.\r
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HOLY CRAP!\r
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If you use Blogger Pro, you lose your headlines, but other than that, wow, this thing really does work.\r
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I’m going to send the link to the guy who does pMachine in the hopes he can code this up for use with pM. As it stands now, I still like pM more, except for this Blogger import feature. And if you’ve been on Blogger a long time...that can be a dealbreaker.
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#13 Posted by Sean Galbraith on 07/07 at 12:03 PM -
Blog spam. bleh.
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#1 Posted by CGHill
on 11/10 at 05:04 PM -
I didn’t find quite as much difficulty installing Movable Type as some have reported, perhaps because I’ve installed weird things like message boards and such before and it takes a lot more to scare me than it used to. Still, it’s not for someone who has been on Blogger for two weeks and is already feeling the pinch.\r