OT: Best blogging software?

[Joseph E. Sacco, Ph.D.]

Clint,

Check out ZOPE

	http://www.zope.org

>From the ZOPE WEB site:

        "ZOPE is an open source application server for building content
        management systems, intranets, portals, and custom applications.
        The ZOPE community consists of hundreds of companies and
        thousands of developers all over the world, working on building
        the platform and ZOPE applications. ZOPE is written in Python, a
        highly-productive, object-oriented scripting language."

ZOPE can be made to do everything you asked and more. ZOPE runs "out of
the box" on most platforms.  ZOPE is highly extensible and comes with a
large collection of pre-built modules that will do everything you asked.
ZOPE will also provide you with a rationale for learning Python should
you wish to roll your own modules [:-)].
 
I take it that you are in an academic environment. If so, you should
give consideration to hosting your own site. There are many connectivity
options ranging from your own broadband connection, to being a node on
the university grid, to co-locating a server at another site. If you opt
for being a node on the university grid and and do not want the
university's name in your URL, you register your own domain name and get
the university to act as your SOA.

Beyond connectivity to the world, the next major consideration is
*security*. Modern linux systems can be made a secure as you wish them
to be. You will get to learn more about setting up firewalls and DMZ's
than you probably want to know.

A final point to consider is "time is money".  Open software is free
only time is free.


-Joseph

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On Thu, 2005-01-06 at 23:05, Clinton MacDonald wrote:
> Friends:
> 
> This question is way, way off topic, but you are the smartest folks I 
> know, so I thought I would float it here first:
> 
> What are your recommendations for blogging software and hosting services?
> 
> We have started a new and exciting project in our laboratory, and it is 
> involving many of my students and post-docs as well as some 
> collaborators. To keep everyone abreast of the latest findings (new 
> findings are coming at an almost daily rate), I started sending out a 
> mass e-mail to the seven or eight principle participants. It occurred to 
> me that a diary of this project might be of greater interest, since it 
> is a sort of flashlight on the discovery process as we make it, so I 
> thought I might start up a blog. But I don't know what is best.
> 
> Here is what I *think* I want (perhaps you can explain to me why I might 
> not want all of it). I probably cannot host my own blog, so I will need 
> a reasonably priced third party hosting (but maybe you can explain to me 
> why I *can* host my own blog). Most of my actual blog entries will be 
> from Mac OS X, but I will likely be making posts from other locations, 
> too, perhaps from a password-protected browser interface. A Linux client 
> would be a plus, although the browser interface would work in a pinch.
> 
> [] easy to use Mac OS X blogging client (YDL-compatible client a plus!)
> 
> [] accessible from multiple locations (say from work and from home)
> 
> [] password-protected browser interface an option (gotta post from the 
> Coffee Shop!)
> 
> [] local storage of individual posts as well as on the hosted site (for 
> backup peace-of-mind)
> 
> [] ability to include simple formatting using some kind of markup 
> language (for instance, our favorite gene has a Greek letter in its name)
> 
> [] automated RSS generation (do they all have this now?)
> 
> [] flexibility, so that I can move the posts to another host, if necessary
> 
> [] the possibility in the future of moving the blog to my own domain 
> name ("www.macdonaldlab.net," or something similar)
> 
> [] a good support community if I encounter problems
> 
> There, does that cover everything?
> 
> I have heard of TypePad, Movable Type, Blogger.com, Radio Userland, and 
> so on, but I am not sure which are applications, which are hosting 
> services, which are both, what are the features of each, and so on.
> 
> Many, many thanks!
> 
> Best wishes,
> Clint
-- 
joseph_sacco[at]comcast[dot]net