Recommendations for Good Blogging Software + Hosting Services?
I've much appreciated PowerBlogs, which we've been using for several years, but I'm afraid that Chris Lansdown is shutting PowerBlogs down, and we'll have to move to some other blogging software and some other hosting company. Any suggestions, especially as to blogging software? We're looking for reliability, easy of use, and a good feature set. We'd naturally prefer if it wasn't very expensive, but if it costs some money to do this right, we'll likely be happy to spend it.
If you have recommendations, positive, negative, or (especially) comparative, please post them, or e-mail me at volokh at law.ucla.edu. Many thanks!
I've also been happy for the past five years with Blogs-About hosting, out of Wisconsin. It runs me $270/yr. There are certainly cheaper, but that's not my prime criterion. Hosts who will fix things fast is.
We're using ApolloHosting and have pretty good luck, but there are some important, frequently unused "tweaks" that you can make to the templates to speed up your site and reduce the number of requests to the database.
I'd love to move to a managed dedicated server - too much money for our budget.
For templates, we went with a theme from StudioPress.com that I have slightly customized.
Good luck! Any questions - feel free to contact me.
Also if you are trying to do something fancier, I would recommend using hub.org as a hosting service. The hosting is top-notch, reasonably low price, etc, and it is easy to upgrade the hosting requirements if needed.
The self-installed version of Wordpress is a great platform as well, though it may require a bit of customization to set up. I've used it to power several blogs/other websites, and there's a large and helpful community of folks out there who can help you pretty inexpensively.
If you don't want to deal with hosting issues at all, you might consider Typepad.com, which is SixApart's blog hosting service. I don't have religion about either Typepad or Wordpress, but you will likely hear different from folks with more experience one way or the other.
One other word of advice: try not to change the existing URL structure, if at all possible. Search engines like to see content and URLs stay in one place, otherwise all of the inbound links to them depreciate in value. If you must change the URLs, make sure to do a 301 ("permanent") redirect on the old URLs to the new URLs, so the search position you've earned over the years is maintained. You will likely need to use mod_rewrite to accomplish this, if you host your own blog.
Please get one that has threaded and rated comments! :)
(I only mention this because I know you've enjoyed programming in the past. WordPress is definitely a good choice if you don't enjoy it/have the time for it now.)
I've found that Django makes it very easy to implement very flexible, extendable, blog-like sites.
http://www.djangoproject.com/
http://byteflow.su/
http://wordpress.org/download/
As for hosting, I like nearlyfreespech.net, which is cheap but also scalable. I'd be surprised if you really need a virtual private server (VPS) as some commenters suggest.
But you might be better off just paying for a premium hosted account through WordPress.com, MovableType.com, or TypePad.com. Then you don't really need to worry either about hosting or about installing and customizing the software.
- http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=947
- http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=949
While I can't imagine running the Conspiracy using WordPress in a shared hosting environment — I assume you need more horsepower — should you investigate that route, always ask each potential hosting provider how they accomplish privilege domain separation. If you get anything other than that they run su_php, mpm_itk, or something along those lines, stay far away. IIRC, it was Blues Host where the "tech" I spoke to initially didn't understand the question, talked to a "senior" tech, and then came back with something about a dedicated IP address and a non-std port assignment. Other hosting companies have told me to chmod 777 the WordPress upload directory (so that WP, running as the Apache user, could write to it). You want your WordPress scripts to run as your account, not the Apache account. With VPS, you won't have this trouble.
FWIW, HostICan gave a correct answer to the privilege question. I haven't yet set up an account with them, so can't comment on how well they operate. I've had difficulties in the past with 1&1, DreamHost, and Midphase (AN Hosting).
I was the webmaster for Colorado Linux Users &Enthusiasts for several years. We've been having no trouble at all with VPS from Spry.net.
A VPS running Ubuntu server under Xen would be nice. But you'd have to do things such as configure Postfix yourself (for e-mail) and other sysadmin stuff, as others have mentioned, including keeping an eye on the various logs, watching for cracking attempts, etc.
If you were going after something more involved, with community features and social media options and so on, Drupal is great. It's not the best choice for a standard blog, though, because it can be complicated and it's not a blog centric concept.
For a site this size, I wouldn't go on an old school shared server, but neither would I want to add managing a dedicated server and protecting it against hackers to my list of responsibilities. I would look at a cloud hosting service like Mosso, which can scale pretty seamlessly if you get a traffic spike.
I keep up with postings on Slashdot, but lord, it is a pain... the comments interface on Slashdot is the most ill-conceived hunk'o'junk on the web. Please do not emulate Slashdot!
Please do keep the comments, though. Although I'm sure it's a trial sometimes policing them, they often add valuable insights to the postings.
NO RATED COMMENTS.
Also, I'll recant slightly. It might well be possible to find a shared hosting package to suit your needs, but I'm pretty sure it won't be the basic level $3.95 or $5.95/mo. How well shared hosting might work for you will depend a great deal on how well your provider manages server loads and tuning.
Ratings have to be done right though. The ratings on sites like dig and Youtube are of little value. The system Slashdot uses makes it work. Slashdot's software seems to be buggy though. The only way I can get it to actually filter out all the comments below 3 and to include all the comments 3 and above is to turn Javascript off and use the classic discussion system in nested mode. And I haven't yet found a way to get it to show only the most recent comments, even in flat mode, sorted newest or oldest first. The new comments get mixed in with the old.
I think that with the large and intelligent user base you have here at VC, a good rating system like Slashdot could make VC the most influential web site in the world.
Just think about something that's scalable, easy to import into, and easy to work with. Do a test installation on a private site that you can hit to make sure it's working fine before you set up redirects. I have no doubt that with his background, Prof Volokh will be able to set up the new site fine.
Also, the last time I visited a drupal site, it asked me to download some software to view it - that could be a problem with only that one site. I didn't want to go there bad enough to find out.
GoDaddy works fine for me, but my readership in a days time doesn't even equal yours in a minute. Not even close.
The one host service you absolutely never ever want to go near is ThinkHost. I doubt you would, but thought I'd warn you anyway.
I hate rated comments. I'm also not too fond of nested comments that only nest two or three deep. That's relative useless too.
The PowerBlogs related post tool is really nice and I hope you can keep that.
You should also pin down how much traffic you're getting now... views &bandwidth... and how much you're willing to spend.
2. The audience here at the VC is a much different audience than youtube.com, so I don't think that is a fair comparison. I am confident that VCers can make accurate and fair assessments of comments and can rate them accordingly.
3. Additionally, are there rated comments where the moderators can change the rating? E.g., could the moderator find a comment he/she likes and change the rating to a positive or high one?
4. Threaded comments are useful because you can see who is replying to what. These sequential comment boards are very confusing, as I have to keep in my mind 5-6 different conversations at once while reading them sequentially.
An "attention-seeking post" could be one that is (1) inflammatory and obnoxious or (2) well thought out and written.
In the former case, presumably that will be rated poorly. In the latter case, isn't that what we want to accomplish by using a rating system?
Also, don't you think there are ALREADY incentives to post attention-seeking comments... why else do you think we post here in the first place?!
Thus, this argument against rated comments make no sense.
"Explicitly partisan rants" happen here pretty much all the time. See OK's recent post.
I don't know what you mean by "mushy diatribes." I don't see why a "diatribe" would appeal to the median commentator (assuming the median commentator is a moderate.)
As for the "partisan rants," a rated comments system would help solve this problem. Assume we have a even ideological split, 40-20-40 (conservative-moderate-liberal). I assert that the people on the ends of the ideological spectrum +rate the agreeable partisan rants, and -rate the disagreeable partisan rants, and thus the overall result would be a wash. Ultimately, then, the "rating" would be determined by the median, e.g. the moderates, who may be willing to be swayed by the logical force of the argument instead of the heated rhetoric.
I suppose that's a somewhat simplistic model (I'm pretty sure there have been studies on this sort of phenomenon in democratic elections), but I think it holds in this particular case.
Cheers.
Currently, you are mostly likely to get a response from other people (which I assume is a goal of the commentators) by posting something that contains controversial language or heated rhetoric. This is because people become indignant and feel as though they need to respond.
However, with a ratings system, the more controversial or "out on the fringes" you are, the more likely you will be -rated by people, even including those who share your ideology. As a recent example, see Republican Senator Cornyn "rebuking" Limbaugh and Gingrich's recent comments on Sotomayor.
That way, instead of feeling the need to response to every "fringe" post that angers you, you can just -rate them and move on. Eventually, once such a post reaches a certain threshold (e.g. a net -10 rating), that post becomes "collapsed" so that you have to click on it in order to uncollapse it and read it.
My local newspaper has comment rating at its news site and 80% of the posters give a thumbs down by who the poster is rather than based on what he/she says. Best if someone really disagrees with what is posted is to simply say so and why.
I actually think the current engine one of the better blog comments vehicles out there. Easy to read, easy to comment, easy to post links, easy to quote
The only shortcoming is a lack of an editting plug-in. It drives me nuts that I inevitably make syntax, spelling, typos and the like and then can't fix them. Obviously this might be open to abuse by the unscrupulous who would remove ill conceived arguments or change the meaning of their posts to undercut later comments. I don't know if there are editting plug-ins that retain a copy of the original, so you can keep the process honest.
A better search engine would be great. I have an easier time finding old threads I'm looking for by leaving the site and going to google than using the included pico-search.
Is this software/engine going away? I'm a little out of the loop, although I can infer a bit from context, how much of this is about hosting and how much is about the comments engine itself -- and or some intermediary administrative and appearance functions.
I personally wouldn't favor threaded or nested comments (unless you can easily unthread and even then I'm not sure). It is not so hard to keep track of a few different themes or codecils of discourse within a thread. So maybe I'm chiming in for all us ADD commentors who like a discussion that bounces around alot.
I don't favor ratings. The way to diminish rants, partisan or otherwise, is not to respond to them (admittedly it hasn't deterred me, and I may have set the record for closeout posts on threads where I write a novel -- not exactly rants but generally more than the brief pointed quips that inspire conversation). And should a certain post evoke a lot of that without much useful discussion inbetween, I think it is pretty much self correcting. I go look for another post to comment on, or wait for another thread on that topic. So the phenomenon is moderately self limiting.
A few final asides: there has been virtually no spam on here but I've never had to fight with one of those clunky anti-spam tools. And it is very reliable in terms of signing in and posting comments.
I do like the PM format of forums where you can send a private message to another commentor. I keep my e-mail link posted so folks can e-mail me, but I can understand a reluctance for everyone to do that, whereas receiving a PM doesn't divulge your base e-mail address and you can decide whether to respond, or even whether to bother looking at it.
I like being notified when there are comments posted. Obviously not important on a busy thread, you just know to go back. And, of course, it is is not threaed or nested, it wouldn't necessarily be clear that responses were to a particular comment, so it might not be feasible. Or maybe if users could set some kind of numerical threshold, i.e. when 10 responses come in to a thread, or ???
Thanks for asking for input on this important change.
Brian
Use Greasemonkey to strip them out -- it works much better than complaining like a petulant child.
You don't have to give the ratings any weight if you don't want.
FWIW, I actually think rated comments would be problematic on this forum. Instead what I have always suggested is that there are "deputy moderators" appointed by the bloggers who have the power to hide posts from the public when they are genuinely uncivil. This might take some custom development, but not a whole lot.
One other thing I would highly recommend as features go would be threaded comments. Wordpress has a plugin for this. Threaded comments would make it easier to track who is responding to whom, especially on long conversations.
That may limit your choice of blogging platform, unless you want to devote some real time/money/attention to figuring out a custom way to move your posts &comments to their new home.
With that in mind:
+1 for Slicehost, if you want a pure hosting solution. I've had good experiences with them, and their how-to articles are really excellent if you have a little technical background to start. For an extra fee, they'll do a regular (daily, hourly) snapshot of your server for you.
+1 for Wordpress as a platform.
-1/+1 for Squarespace. It's really pretty, and it has reasonable import options, but I found the range of motion pretty limited. They do have a free trial. And it would be a good solution for handling traffic spikes, if that's a concern. The cost can be comparable to hosting a Wordpress blog yourself. The biggest Squarespace package is $50/mo. A mid-sized slice on Slicehost, with backup images turned on, is $48/mo.
+1 for Feedburner, to lighten the server load from your RSS feeds, give people the option of email subscriptions without you having to maintain a mail server, etc.
Rated comments work well when people come to a blog in the spirit of mutual search and debate and where there is a general respect for opposition. This exists in some threads on this forum but it is not universal.
In other threads, I would expect the namecalling to carry over into ratings. This would exacerbate the civility issues rather than help to solve them. Basically I came to the conclusion that if it were my blog, there would only be a small subset of users I would trust to fairly moderate.
An alternative would be for the Conspirators to be able to control WHO can rate comments if folks go that way.
There's nothing in Drupal that requires a special download; the standard installation doesn't even use Flash. It, of course, uses Flash to display Youtube movies, etc.
There are probably around 1000 to 2000 add-ons for it (drupal.org/project/modules) and there are plenty of people available to write custom ones if necessary.
I use it for several of my sites, including the one linked under "www". That uses stock add-ons for most features: views, CCK, a lightbox module, etc. A little custom JS and PHP does the rest.
It can create a simple blog-style site with minimal setup; has a fairly steep learning curve if you want to do complicated things but it's worth it.
If using Wordpress, use the MobilePress plugin too. This will give a really nice smartphone interface so people can read you on the go...
I use 1 and 1 for hosting. Haven't had problems with them in nearly 5 years of using them.
If you choose 1 and 1, make sure you choose Linux hosting for a Wordpress blog.
I strongly agree. I really, really don't like threaded comments (as either a reader or commenter).
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crim:
True, but that problem can be greatly ameliorated if comment numbers are available and are used.
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reasoner:
I agree. Ratings there make it easy to find the best content. Same thing at various other places, like digg, WP and NYT. And anyone who doesn't like the idea can simply ignore the ratings. Which is what everyone will do, if the system ends up being a failure, for whatever reason. But it makes sense to at least try it.
There are lots of different ways of doing a rating system, but I think in general they add value.
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devil:
I would also greatly appreciate seeing that feature.
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einhverfr:
I assume that the set of lurkers is much larger than the set of commenters, so I also assume that most raters would be lurkers (and I also think a reader should be able to rate without logging in or registering). So hopefully there will be a large number of relatively neutral raters, and this would hopefully outweigh the influence of the problem you described.
Also, I think it should be understood that a strong negative rating isn't necessarily a sign of a bad comment. If I visit a given site that usually promotes X, there might be a certain commenter who frequently promotes not-X, and therefore gets negative ratings, even if their comments are valid. But an intelligent reader can read a few comments and figure out that this is what's happening.
Not all of us use Firefox.
I know this has been a WordPress love-in, with fortunately a couple positive SquareSpace comments thrown in (my second choice), but why buy a Winnebago just to drive back and forth to work? ;)
Hosting:
Warning- Shameless-plug: I provide web hosting on the RackSpace Mosso grid platform. Very reliable, very fast, great support. If you know about how much bandwidth you use, I'd love to create a quote for you.
If you have a comment about spelling, typos, or format errors, please e-mail the poster directly rather than posting a comment.
Comment Policy: We reserve the right to edit or delete comments, and in extreme cases to ban commenters, at our discretion. Comments must be relevant and civil (and, especially, free of name-calling). We think of comment threads like dinner parties at our homes. If you make the party unpleasant for us or for others, we'd rather you went elsewhere. We're happy to see a wide range of viewpoints, but we want all of them to be expressed as politely as possible.
We realize that such a comment policy can never be evenly enforced, because we can't possibly monitor every comment equally well. Hundreds of comments are posted every day here, and we don't read them all. Those we read, we read with different degrees of attention, and in different moods. We try to be fair, but we make no promises.
And remember, it's a big Internet. If you think we were mistaken in removing your post (or, in extreme cases, in removing you) -- or if you prefer a more free-for-all approach -- there are surely plenty of ways you can still get your views out.