Monday, February 2, 2009

Tell me your Plone blogging tool preferences

I have a new internal facing Plone project here at NASA. One of my requirements is to have a blog system. So this is your chance to suggest to me your favorite blogging tool. Want to see some requirements? Sure!
  • Must work in Plone 3.1.x+.
  • Groups will have blogs.
  • Users will be in possibly multiple groups.
  • Any user in a group can post a blog entry.
  • Output must be Section 508 compliant.
What do I want to see in a blogging tool as a developer?
  • Easy to implement.
  • Clean code base so it will be easy to migrate to future versions of Plone.
Update: Thanks to the comments, for now I am going with Scrawl. It meets my formal requirements handily, and also meets my personal preferences. If the scope of the blog grows I will explore other options.

8 comments:

  1. Scrawl (we wrote it at ONE/Northwest) or QuillsEnabled. Basically you want something that uses existing content types, which is more future proof.

    Scrawl is very minimalist, QuillsEnabled is a bit more feature-rich, but also a bit more "work-in-progress."

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  2. I agree with Jon's point of view. I also use Scrawl in my Plone site.

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  3. I'm a big fan of using the right tool for the right job. You can make Plone do blogging, but it pales to what other blog-focused systems like WordPress can do.

    Consider wrapping WP and Plone behind Deliverance. That's what OpenPlans.org is.

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  4. +1 on Scrawl. It's simple, it's lightweight, it's future-proof. It's done the Plone way.

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  5. +1 to the Plone way (e.g. Scrawl or some simple content type based on 'News item' that you can extend) but +1 (or 0.5 at least) for gkirk's suggestion too, based on the bells/whistles aspect (i.e. Plone plus Deliverance, it's new and shiny!). There will be a complexity cost for the latter, though, where the payoff is a more feature-rich site (that uses the right tools for the right job).

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  6. Using the standard NewsItem for my blog. Blog items get a special subject 'BlogItem'. A collection is used for aggregating and syndication...no further pain with your next Plone migration

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  7. +1 on QuillsEnabled. Quills is the only 'full-featured' Plone blogging solution that's survived the ravages of time and kept a consistent community around it. QuillsEnabled is essentially as feature rich as Quills itself, though, you'll need to use the svn version. There's a mailing list available too for any queries (I hang out there too).

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  8. @Jon Stahl, @shigeo, @limi, @Alex - I'm giving scrawl a test run now.

    @ajung - I will try that as well.

    @Jon Stahl, @duffyd - QuillsEnabled goes way beyond my list requirements. If I ever need its capabilities, I should be able to cook up a migration system.

    @Gerry, @Alex - The idea of using deliverance to fetch the precise and exactly right tool is an interesting one. The extra complexity doesn't fit the budget/timeline I have for this project, but I'll keep it in mind for future efforts.

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