Domino and Notes are moving faster than I can keep up, it seems.
I'm still running DominoBlog, and haven't upgraded to IBM's blogging template yet. And because my employer is stuck on R6.5.3, I'm not likely to anytime soon.
IBM's embracing of DominoBlog is great, but leaves me somewhat wondering what to do next. I like DominoBlog, but I'm currently wondering whether or not I should upgrade to 7.0.2 or just switch to some other blogging software.
(And I don't want to move to 7.02 unless I have to - the ability to edit work templates on my home machines in an emergency without worrying about recompiled LotusScript causing problems is worth a lot to me!)
Currently way ahead of the pack is Blogo. I've got a test blog running here, and I'm pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to set up and how functional it is. It's not perfect - ratings seem to be linked to commenting, which is a little odd. That's about it, though. On the plus side, its handling of tagging, new article creation and so forth is very good.
Later this week, I'll tinker with customising the look and feel and see how far I can get there. But later this month, I could well be archiving this blog and moving to a whole new set of URLs. Consider yourselves warned...
Comments (7)
philipstorry February 5th, 2007 21:28:00
You don't need Domino 7 to use the Blog template. You do need it to get the template, but you can extract that if needed. The template is based on DominoBlog and there's no release specific code. We run a Blog on a 6.5 server and haven't had any issues.
I'll be making the same decision on upgrading my blog up to the new release. Need to see if I'm losing any functionality that I use now with the upgrade.
I'm in the unique position of knowing (in terms of Steve Castledine, from two weeks ago!) all three major blog authors.
Dec with Blogsphere, Ferdy Christant with Blogo, and of course Steve with the IBM blog.
I suspect that none of them will *require* you to run v7.x software.
And I suspect, that if you asked around, you could find someone to host your blog - of whatever flavour - on a v7.x server.. Possbly for next to nothing.
Now, in terms of the three blogs - three different approaches, and all very good. Sorry I cant help you choose.
All I can say is that all three guys are committed, excellent folks, who I'm sure wouldn't turn down a quick support request if you got stuck. Though not an officially supported route, etc, etc.
This comes from a chap who "rolled his own" blog back between 1999-2003.. My blog was awful. Its *hard* stuff to do, and these chaps have done it well.
So pick one that you find interesting...
---* Bill
... you don't need 7.0.2 to run the blog. I checked with Steve to be sure, and he confirmed. I then loaded it up on the work servers (running 6.5.3), and it runs just fine...
Email me if you need a copy of the 702 template...
@1 Ted - Yeah, the potential loss of functionality when moving to the official IBM Blog Template might catch us die-hards on the ol' Domino Blog.
I believe Steve worked very hard to only remove all the stuff that was more, um, "faddish". The bits that were hardly used by anyone, and were put in because, well, it looked cool. The main thing I'd notice is that all logging now goes to an external database, IIRC. And frankly, that's no great problem. I'm pretty sure that for my minimal usage, DominoBlog would be fine.
@2 Bill - NAME DROPPER! *coughs* Anyway, yeah, I know that R7 isn't required to run the blogs. But I thought R7.0.2 was required to have the license for it. A small technicality, but I like to be within my licenses whereever possible. :-)
I believe my hosting provider - Domino Developer Network - runs 7.0.1 already, so I'm pretty confident that I'd have no problems there anyway...
@3 Duffbert - Thanks for the confirmation that it works fine on R6.5.3. Most useful. :-)
@4 Chris - Cheers for the offer. :-)
Hi Phil - I bet you will find no functionality loss when you upgrade. I mainly simplified. The biggest loss is the web clients rich text editor is now rubbish in comparison to the old one with removing the great solution that was done by a 3rd party. This will be corrected in due course.
The loss of the editor could be a problem for me. I've grown used to spell-checking. ;-)
Simplifying is good, though. One of the reasons I like Blogo is that it's so darned simple... My blogging is simple, so that's all I need!
I'm grabbing the IBM Blogging Template shortly, and will probably perform an update here before I make any decisions...
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