This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz
by James Robertson.
Original Post: How do the Cincom Community Blogs rank?
Feed Title: Michael Lucas-Smith
Feed URL: http://www.michaellucassmith.com/site.atom
Feed Description: Smalltalk and my misinterpretations of life
Here is an interesting comparison report on the different weblogging systems out there. For starters, the Cincom Community weblogging system isn't "open" for anyone to join, you have to ask Jim via email, or irc, or in person. There's no submit form to get involved.
Secondly, there is no webpage for it like there is for BottomFeeder, so if people were to know its available, they have to have talked to Jim, again.
In terms of features though, how does it stack up? Well, for one, it's in the Free list! That's always a good thing. It's also under the Creative Commons license, which beats MIT and GPL hands down. It's mature, so that's also a plus in its favour. It doesn't need a backend database like *all* the other servers do.
Is it internationalised? I believe so - since there are European and Russian and Indian bloggers using it. How many weblogs can it support? Unlimited and can it be on multiple sites? Yes. What is the posting order - it's always descending chronologically.
How about categories? It only has one category for each item which is both a plus and a minus. Subcategories? - No, it's a single flat category list. Keywords? No. The number of default posting fields that must be filled in to get a post up - 3: title, category, body.
Editor? - It has two editors, one on the website using a basic form and another plugin system inside BottomFeeder which I'm using right now called the Blog Poster. The Blog Poster can be used not just with the Cincom Community blogs, but with most other blogging systems that support open API's as well.
Does the editor have a draft mode? - Yesish. You can save drafts in the Blog Poster and before you send them to the server you can preview them. But that doesn't extend in to post moderation. The Blog code on the server only uses the Cincom blog API, but as I mentioned above, the Blog Poster can use the blog Post API.
Post pings? - As far as I know, yes. Bookmarklets? - No
Outputs! Here it shines some more. Basically every version of RSS under the sun can be produced including Atom 0.2 and 0.3. Comments, yes, but not threaded. Comment spam is not filtered, though I imagine the need to filter it will arrise soon enough. A separate comment RSS feed? Yes.
Templates for posts? Nope. Template tagging? Yes, a set of hard coded Wiki syntax rules can be used by ticking a box before you post. Things like **'s to do bold and //'s to do italics. Templates in general? Yes, the templates are SSP files, which are like JSP's but for Smalltalk. You can't edit them online in some configuration program, they have to be edited on the server.
User security? Yes, it is secure, only those that have the right username and password and encryption key can post to the server. Trackbacks? - As far as I know, yes. Pingback's - again, as far as I know yes.
RSS Aggregator? That's BottomFeeder isn't it?
Forum? No. File editor? No. CSS Editor? Definitely no - the template for the blogs is handled by the server not by the user. If you were configuring the server, then you'd have to use whatever tool you've got to edit the CSS and templates, etc.
Plugins/Extensions - Not really. When they talk about this they mean things like posting what song you're playing in Winamp right now. No - All this code is multiplatform. BottomFeeder has plugins though.
Visitor Logs? Yes, but only available to the server admin. Referrer logs? Yes, and it even filters out referrer spam.
Imports? Nope, forget it. User profiles? Not really, just your username and password and blog title - you can't edit them.
SEF URLs - Search friendly URL's? No, each URL has a permanent magic number.
Thumbnails for photos on the side? No, it would be nice to have this I guess. Category images? No. Skin Switching? No. Cross-Post - yes, you can very easily post on some other blogs topic inside BottomFeeder.
Linkroll - yes, but the tool to set it up could be better. Password posts? - ie: protect an individual post by a password so that its a private blog entry? No. Blog by Email? No.
User Community - Yes, on irc.parcplace.net:6667 in #smalltalk. Documentation - For the blog server? No. For the Blog Poster? No. For BottomFeeder? Yes, lots of it too.
Previous Topic
