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Geeklog Vs OtherWebLogs

Thursday, November 01 2001 @ 07:58 am EST
Contributed by: Anonymous
Views: 21,838

My intention as of mid-day today (approx) is to launch a website for my local community. Now, I read slashdot, I like slashdot and so the weblog format seems the way to go. I found a listing of many weblog systems rather than starting from scratch. Some seem quite good, some not so good. Geeklog is standing out as the nicest, but when we get down to it are there any specific arguments for choosing GeekLog over solutions like phpNuke, or phpWebsite

As an after thought: Is it the intention of the Geeklog team to offer a 'slash' type solution or are you aiming somewhere else? Personally I don't get the "moderator" scenario slashdot has, but is there an equivelant in GeekLog?

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GL Differentiators

Authored by: Tony on Thursday, November 01 2001 @ 09:31 pm EST

Yes, Geeklog is meant to be a weblog/newsportal/what-ever-you-call-it package similar to Slashdot/Kuro5hin/Nuke/etc. However, the original creator of GL, Jason Wittenburg, built Geeklog with security and performance in mind. To-date (and according to less-than-scientific tests) Geeklog seems to outperform almost all weblogs in speed. We hope that after we raise the bar with the release of 1.3 to have time to compare performance using more scientific means (apache-bench?).

Perhaps the neatest feature of Geeklog is the new security model due out with version 1.3. This security model is very much *nix-like and uses the owner/group/world model for Geeklog objects (stories, links, blocks, etc). This security model can be easily extended to be used by plugins of the system. For the purposes of Geeklog, we seperated the world group into two subgroups: members (users logged in but aren\'t the owner or part of the group of an object) and anonymous (users that are browsing the site but not logged in). Making this distinction you can easily hide content from anonymous users making membership to you Geeklog site more attractive.

I will say, however, that Geeklog hasn\'t implemented many of the bells and whistles of the bigger weblogs particularly moderated submission queues and user/comment ratings. However, don\'t take Geeklog lightly...it is a very capable weblog system.

---
The reason people blame things on previous generations is that there's only one other choice.

GL Differentiators

Authored by: Tane on Friday, November 02 2001 @ 04:11 am EST

Ehh, I thought Geeklog DID have moderated submission queue? I.e. a member of a lower security group or anonymous people can submit stories and links, but a moderator needs to accept them.

Also, for 1.3 Geeklog will have a much more open structure, with the plugin API and Database abstraction being the big 2 for this.

GL Differentiators

Authored by: Tony on Friday, November 02 2001 @ 06:01 am EST

No, when I say moderated submission queue I mean open-moderation. In other-words, all users (not just admins) can rate items in the submission queue and once an item reaches a certain threshold it is automatically posted. Of course admins can override this process and post thing directly.

---
The reason people blame things on previous generations is that there's only one other choice.

GL Differentiators

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Sunday, November 04 2001 @ 04:32 pm EST

Um...no buddy. There is absolutely no way GL is faster then other systems. Try loading GL with a million comments over thousands of stories, then try loading them all in, say, nested mode out of the DB. Geeklog, last time I checked (admittedly, 1.1) makes a helluva lot of DB calls. It is easy to implement? Yes. It is powerful? Pretty much. Do the themes rock? you bet. Is it as fast as Scoop or whatever? No way. Sure its as fast as Nuke, but what isn't?

So whatever happened to completely rewriting GL in the full OO paradigm with minimal DB calls, etc? Oh, I guess I mean 2.0? Oh yeah, it died...

Damn, I shouldn't have gone to college...then I could have worked on GL instead.

GL Differentiators

Authored by: Tane on Monday, November 05 2001 @ 01:36 am EST

Geeklog 2.0 isn\'t dead.

It was decided to get a stable 1.x version of Geeklog out before working on 2.0 (which will be compleatly OO)

1.x still has some way to being optimized, but its getting there.

GL Differentiators

Authored by: MLimburg on Wednesday, November 07 2001 @ 02:57 pm EST

The 1.x is \"sketchboard\" code. We\'re still working on what we want and need within this webapp. Once we\'re mostly happy with GL 1.x as a fully featured weblog (and that\'s for our own needs on our own sites), then we\'ll clamp on feature. 1.x.y releases will be done to provide bug fixes and minor refinements.

Then comes v2.x releases. Now that we have our conceptual framework established, it\'s time to replace the patchworked backend code to a customised engine, all sitting on an OOP framework.

Quit trolling.

---
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.

GL Differentiators

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Friday, January 17 2003 @ 03:53 pm EST

Since speed is a "selling" point, should you convert to OO? This should be a consideration.

GL Differentiators

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Friday, January 17 2003 @ 06:14 pm EST

They're planning to do that in GL2. Personally, I don't think OO speeds up the processing. I've used different OO written software and found it to execute much slower. This could very well be because the code was not written efficiently, but I still haven't seen any that performs better than non-OO written code.

It also worries me a bit that the developers are going to use PEAR. PEAR also seems to execute slower.

weblog comparisons

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Friday, November 02 2001 @ 04:34 am EST

In the past month or two I have installed or compared just about every piece of software that bills itself as a content manager, portal, or weblog, searching for a site manager that would work for both the classes I teach at Cal State Nortridge and for a couple of sites with politically sensitive material that might come under hacker attack. I essentially have been living on freshmeat and sourceforge, with frequent side trips to hotscripts and Zend. Some reactions:

There are surprisingly only two systems with good flood control (the ability to restrict the frequency of posts by a malevolent user), Geeklog and Drupal. Drupal unfortunately has a downright Byzantine system for community voting on both items and comments. If you don't like it you need to rip out code in massive hunks. However, the Drupal engine has been stripped down and incorporated into the latest version of HPE, the software that runs NewsIsFree, so it bears watching.

Of phpNuke and its forks, the parent program has a large following, lots of plugins, an irascible project owner, and the code is pretty bad spaghetti. MyPhpNuke has a development community beset by bickering and is probably worth avoiding. PostNuke is progressing nicely, but suffers from a kind of kitchen sink approach. Of all the forks, the one I like the most is phpWebSite, largely because it's being developed in an academic setting (Appalachian State) and thus seems to be a more orderly project, and because its releases are becoming increasingly modular. But I'll probably be switching from phpWS to Geeklog for the security features.

If you don't mind Perl, Scoop is the most robust and active open source project.

Finally, if your needs are more content management driven and if you've got root access and/or JSP servlet support, check out EZPublish, Typo3, and if you're really brave, Knight-Ridder's CoFax content management system. But you really need to have your own server rather than a virtual host.

This is already too long a post, but I'd be happy to answer any further comparison questions.

Good insight

Authored by: Tony on Friday, November 02 2001 @ 06:05 am EST

Given all the work you\'ve put in in evaluating all the weblogs out there, where do you think Geeklog falls short? What areas can it improve in?

Yeah, of the ones you\'ve listed, Scoop seems by far the most polished both in terms of code layout (despite it is a language I\'ll never fully learn) and in design layout.

---
The reason people blame things on previous generations is that there's only one other choice.

Good insight

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Friday, November 02 2001 @ 08:13 am EST

I went out for the same task and installed a little zoo with some portals.

After a bit of playing I sort of reached the same conclusion. I am hesitating now between PhpWebSite, PostNuke and GeekLog. I'd add phpweblog to the list of nice systems it you don't want a good user/admin system. Though 0.5.3 adds simple user levels.

What I found interesting is that most systems now try to be modular at the "API" level, I mean it's become easier to add modules ("modularity" in the sense of code being nicely rewritten is another issue). Almost every system I looked at just came out with some major architectural improvements. That's good. What's bad is that between all the things announced for "any time soon" and the preasure of having something now I feel a bit stressed :)

Concerning Geeklog: I can see: Better language support (e.g. users can select their UI language. Full multiple language support would be even better (support for stories in different languages), but difficult. Also, I tried to get Geeklog 1.3 from CVS, but was permission denied.

- Daniel

PS: I have a simple webpage with some pointers.

Good insight

Authored by: Tony on Friday, November 02 2001 @ 08:36 am EST

Language support will be addressed with 1.3. You can expect users to be able to select their language from their account preferences section. However, don\'t expect stories to be converted anytime soon. That will be difficult (dare I say almost impossible) to do with any sort of accuracy. Maybe, at best, we could provide hooks in Geeklog to allow you to use some of the online translation services for the story portion.

I too have noticed the modular design everyone has taken. I think it shows the maturity of this class of software. First, it was just a bunch of proof-of-concept code (ala Slashdot) munged together to do something new. Now weblogs are anything but new and to keep user bases and to encourage others to join in development we are having to make the code modular and maintainable. Geeklog is no different.

Ok...I better get back to coding now ;-)

---
The reason people blame things on previous generations is that there's only one other choice.

Good insight

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Sunday, February 24 2002 @ 10:50 pm EST

Actually.. If I could clarify that statement of Geeklog\'s origin a bit. Geeklog originally was a fork of phpWebLog. JasonW contributed many thoughts and ideas to phpWebLog before deciding to take it (phpWebLog v0.4.2 i think), and rewriting.

Much of the design faults you see in Geeklog today are legacy issues from phpWebLog\'s own design limitations. phpWebLog was designed to be a simple weblog, that\'s all.

Good insight

Authored by: Falkware on Wednesday, November 07 2001 @ 01:41 am EST

I could add timezone selection to the list. For some reason choosing your timezone and have all stories and times reflect your selected timezone has yet to be included.

weblog comparisons

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Friday, November 02 2001 @ 09:57 am EST

Just to let you know that I took the liberty to blog your excellent comparison/comment in my personal blog, over at drop.org. It might be interesting to watch my blog entry as I'm sure it will spin-off some discussion - specially because I don't quite agree with your Drupal statements ;).

Thanks,

-- Dries

weblog comparisons - ALL bad on smtp

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Friday, November 02 2001 @ 10:12 am EST

In some comment above I actually forgot something which for some people would be really cool:

Mail from via central function that could be hacked or alternativly (and better) let people choose between mail/sendmail and some SMTP library that you provide :)

This is why: Under Unixes PhP compiles with sendmail support. Now sendmail does not work in some places. E.g. I have an address like x@host.domain.ch. Host.domain.ch is a real machine and sendmail instead of sending it to the Mail exchange (MX) sends it to a physical machine which just trashes the mail. Don't really understand all this (and in theory sendmail might be configured maybe, but in a sendmail hating environment nobody will help me with this). In any casee, I know that I am not the only one who has to use a smtp class. E.g. in some LANs, sendmail is not even allowed.

If you are interested there are several packages: http://phpclasses.upperdesign.com/browse.html/package/14
http://www.phpguru.org/scripts/10/
http://phpmailer.sourceforge.net/
Doing it properly is some work I guess, but at least calling a central "mymail" and preferable with more arguments than just the 4 mail() ones would ease adaptation work. NONE of the portals I have looked at, have this feature. Would be another argument in favor of GL :).

Bad and lazy programmers like me just do something like this and global-replace calls to mail() .... (and loose some information):

require ("/web/lib/php/smtp-mail/smtp.class");

function my_mail($mailto, $subject, $message, $headers) {
// fix arguments
$mailtolist[]=$mailto;
$from="webrobot@x.y.ch";
// headers come in string :( )
$headers=split("n",$headers);
$headers[]="Subject: ".$subject."n";
// debugging
foreach ($headers as $el ) {
echo "EL=$el";
};
// send it
$mailer = new smtp_class();
$mailer->SendMessage($from,$mailtolist,$headers,$message);
}

Same conclusions

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Friday, November 02 2001 @ 08:21 pm EST

I\'ve been doing basically the same comparison for the last month or so. I\'ve downloaded and tested phpWebsite, PHPNuke, PostNuke, MyPHPNuke, Drupal, GeekLog, and others. My evaluations have been based largely on the underlying database schema. I can tell how much thought and planning has gone into the system by looking at the db structure.

On this point, the Nuke forks do not score well. Though it is a Nuke fork, phpWebSite has made great improvmenets in this area, adding subtopic capability among other things. Geeklog does have a nice clean db schema, but it and phpWebsite both still need work in order to be able to scale to a large-content website. In GeekLog, for example, there are no subtopics or subcategories, and the links categories do not even have a correspoding codes table. Right now, it would be difficult for a user to find what they needed on a GeekLog website with 10,000 links and 2,500 articles / news items.

Gererally speaking, though, I have pretty much come to the same conclusion as ezra on the various weblogs. PostNuke is on the verge of going out of control, in my opinion. I looked at a posted modification to allow multiple-level subcategories, and in looking at how the mod was implemented, it was obvious that this was an ill-planned hack, and I wondered what other code was written with this little forethought.

For my needs, if I went with either phpWebSite or GeekLog, I would still need to integrate a full-featured links module such as PHPLinks, into the software. I would also need to use the phpBB plugin for GeekLog. I haven\'t seen it, but the Nuke forks have tried this and it still looks quite kludgy, and the intergration is incomplete at best. So I\'m interested in what the GeekLog community thinks of this plugin.

I\'m close to making a decision soon, and for me it seems to be between GeekLog and phpWebSite. Both appear to be excellent products, but neither will conform to my vision out of the box.

Same conclusions

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Saturday, November 03 2001 @ 06:10 pm EST

Woohoo - I posted the origional question.
(Hadn't signed up then)
If only it was that weasy to get on the front-page of Slashdot ;)

Anyway...
Persumably if phpBB can be converted to a module for GeekLog then so can phpLinks.

Assuming the phpBB plugin is how I imagine it to be, I think for my uses Geeklog wins. If for no other reason than the community behind it seem organised and agreeable as to the direction in which they are heading.

Unfortunately, my origional community idea has been quashed.. It's amazing how brutal frineds can be when you announce a silly idea ;/ - Now I just need to find a use for a weblog system!

Quick question: Is "full moderation" something that may appear for Geeklog down the line? Perhaps as an option that need only be turned on for larger projects?

well, give phpbb plugin a try

Authored by: Tony on Monday, November 05 2001 @ 08:56 am EST

I have it running at http://www.iowaoutdoors.org/boards/. I'll create a test topic that you can post to.

Yes, the category implementation for everything in GL suxs. I do plan to fix this annoying problem in GL 1.3.1. I will implement it in the DB so that plugins can take advantage of the category system without having to add their own category table. --Tony

---
The reason people blame things on previous generations is that there's only one other choice.

well, give phpbb plugin a try

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Monday, November 05 2001 @ 08:38 pm EST

Personally I like the idea of infinite sub-categories:

Computers: Windows 98: Applications: Microsoft Word

if you get my meaning. Kind of like Yahoo.

Same conclusions

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Friday, November 23 2001 @ 06:15 am EST

Hi @ll,

I never did some testing, but I surfed a lot around the web, to get some impressions about those OpS-CMS-stuff.

I must \"admit\" several Months ago, I decided to take PostNuke (0.60). Why?

1.Because this Burzi-Guy (PHPNuke) really made me sick.
2.IMHO the most \"democratic\" Dev-Team. If someone wants to help - he can.
3.Big community - lot´s of input, lot´s of help
4.At that time (around 4 Month ago) - PostNuke had the nicest Layout around.

BUT: Now I am working with PostNuke, and I must say: It´s more \"Nuke\" than \"Post\". I am primary a Layouter/Designer, not really a Code-Freak.
But to get a clean and unique Layout, you really have to Hack PostNuke like hell -> for ex. to Replace the print.gif (the one, for the link to a printerfriendly Article-Layout) you have to hack 4(!) PHP-Files. And this PHP code is really weird.

So, my question to you: Is there any OPEN-CMS, that are really easy to design? Are they all mixing HTML with PHP?

THX in advance for your help!

Greetz relain

(sry for my rusty english...sigh)

html templates in a weblog

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Thursday, January 03 2002 @ 01:09 pm EST

phpSlash has html based templates. The layout can be very different from a traditional nuke looking site.

http://www.sf.net/projects/phpslash/

html templates in a weblog

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Thursday, January 03 2002 @ 01:38 pm EST

Looks like Geeklog 1.3 has moved to phplib templates so my comment was a little out of sync. Good move! You\'ll never look back, the ease of maintenance is so much better when presentation is moved out of the code.

html templates in a weblog

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Thursday, January 03 2002 @ 01:38 pm EST

Scoop == phpnuke?! no :)

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Monday, November 05 2001 @ 05:39 pm EST

What's up with the scoop link? phpnuke.org? The correct link for scoop is http://scoop.kuro5hin.org/.

--panner

Scoop == phpnuke?! no :)

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Wednesday, July 31 2002 @ 06:21 am EDT

Cool. I really dig the percentage display for the polls on Scoop. Other than that, it looks too Netscape coded to me.

eZ publish NOT SO eZ!!!

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Wednesday, July 31 2002 @ 06:10 am EDT

The software is good for what it is once it\'s running.

This is one of the worst installations I\'ve ever seen! It\'s also the ugliest software I\'ve ever seen! The installation instructions to load it on a server are in fact the LAST page of a PDF document that\'s long enough to put Bill Gates to sleep and to top it off, those instructions really suck rat poison! It totally skips the part about CHMOD\'ng your files on your server. Uploading took me 3 hours due to a bloated upload with more files then you\'ll ever load by any other portal system. Once I got this monstrosity running I expected bells and whistles but that\'s not the case at all. The finished product looks like Steve Ballmer in underwear. eZ publish should be ashamed to offer this product. It\'s only eZ if you know more then the instructions can tell you. I think I\'ll have better luck with PHP-Nuke or Geeklog. They seem to got it together more.

Flame Bait

Authored by: Jason on Tuesday, November 06 2001 @ 10:26 am EST

THis is a hot topic, but while I have my fire-proof undies on I'll add fuel to the fire.

GeekLog is the best for doing what it does. It's simple, quick and secure. In it's entire history it's only had one compromise (a long itme ago) which a was NON ROOT LEVEL compromise (steeling of hashed passwords, big whoop!) and is was fixed in less than 10 minutes. :-)

PhpWebSite is something I check out every some often, it's nice. PhpNuke just sucks. Crash and Burn baby! :-) Both are a PhpThatWare fork/child.

Slash and Scoop are huge, slow and written in perl (could explain the huge and slow). But they are well tested and mature.

---
You are all a bunch of freaks!

Flame Bait

Authored by: Falkware on Wednesday, November 07 2001 @ 01:53 am EST

In respect of Slash, I'd be bold to state that Slashcode is the mother of all weblogs. It's age is showing and PHP has proven to be a better language for this kind of web system. When a server admin then adds ZEND to the equation it's hard to find arguments NOT to use GeekLog for a website as it's core.

I run GeekLog on Falkware.com. The site started out small like any site, but now we're growing fast. The interesting thing is that GeekLog is holding up good so far. Logging over 500,000 pageviews last month there's very little to complain about. Considering the amount of attacks we get on the site, it has yet to be compromised.

I can point out that some users are rather upset about the password system. Someone wanting to cause grief only needs to know the persons username to actually get a password reset and a new one randomly generated.

I think this are could use some re-thinking. A statement about implementing verification pages on actions like delete was was also made, but I've yet to see those.

I'm excited about the access and plugin system in 1.3. I think Tony, Mark and the guys are doing a tremendous job on making GeekLog better, and Falkware.com will continue to grow in the veil of GeekLog.

I do think user support could be perfected, which has little to do with actual software.

I can once more ask for custom timezone setup, a brand new link system (or use something sufficient) and that common sense be used on msg board integration. In other words... make it assimilate with the system. Use the boxes on the sides to display latest posts and so on...

Many ways to go...Lots to think about...

Further I'd like to THANK mark limburg for setting up this new site. Once the logo is reworked it's a great first impression!

Flame Bait

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Wednesday, November 07 2001 @ 05:26 pm EST

I have to agree with you about the password part. A user should confirm/activate their account through a link passed in an email to them, before the password is changed, or even before the account is activated.

Password Reset

Authored by: MLimburg on Thursday, November 08 2001 @ 02:56 pm EST

How does this sound:

anon user requests new password on account name
email is sent to account owner
email contains link to script on site, which uses an emailed variable of md5(username.password_hash) variable
if emailed variable matches md5MD5(username.password_hash), then allow person to enter a new md5'ed password

Sound workable?

---
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.

Geeklog Vs OtherWebLogs

Authored by: 1000ideen on Friday, March 10 2006 @ 11:09 am EST

As this article is one of the most visited ones on geeklog.net I can`t help adding this link:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/02/15/choosing-a-blog-platform/

Darren Rowae is a professional blogger and he listed the pros and cons of chosing an online service like blogspot.com or having ones own CMS. (Maybe Dirk could trackback that article?)

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