Geeklog Forums

Would like to hear some feedback from people that switched from Wordpress to Geeklog.

Why did you switch?
Was it rather easy?

I would also like to know of people that switched from Geeklog to Wordpress, but probably don't have many of those people viewing the forum.

Me, me, me

I tried quite a lot of CMS and also Wordpress. I even tried WP with a lot of plugins and made it work with multiple deployment - wow! You don`t find that trick anywhere 8)

WP is nice, when you need some very, very special plugins which make reading or presentation of postings easier like one that was called "Related Entries". It displayed some 5 postings in the "What's Related" area of a story.

I say it displayED because I can`t find the plugin anymore on the internet and that is the biggest problem. You need 5-10 plugins to make WP run in a similar way like Geeklog and that means you have to keep them updated etc.

I just found "related posts", a similar plugin: http://erwin.terong.com/2005/09/24/wp-plugin-related-posts-link/


What really turned me off was that there is no way to disable the auto correction. E.g. you can`t write "xyz .htaccess" and there is no easy way to hack that. I tried hard even with the German WP forum but we could not turn it off completely. The result is:


One nice plugin was this: http://www.geeklog.net/forum/viewtopic.php?forum=10&showtopic=71960 or the cache or podcast plugin. Some 'plugins' are just being produced in geeklog this summer like "subscribe to comments".

All in all WP is good if you don`t want to design your own theme because there are many nice ones (which is non sense if you work professionally because you will have an own corporate identity), if you fall in love with very special plugins (and don`t mind praying that they are being continued), if you prefer an easy installation process (and don`t mind installing 5-10 plugins additionally).

What type of effort was required to keep the bots and porn from not be listed or registering?

No idea, I never published the site officially. Probably I installed BadBehavior and that is quite good. Spam Karma 2 must also be excellent. I read that in forum postings.

I switched my personal blog over to Wordpress one year ago, and managed to port all of my old GL stories and users over without much problem. I had to re-invent all the little plugins and hacks I used to do things like create a random image, display rss feeds, provide a contact form. I still miss GL occasionally, but WP Akismet spam filtering is a god-send, and theming is so simple. I still use GL for a couple sites that require more group controls including the intranet portal for the company I work for which is massively customized with lots of custom static page code as well as lots of stock plugins (gallery, filemgmt, ewiki,forums, etc.), but upgrading GL is much more of a pain (IMO) than WP. I simply couldn't replace what I'm doing with GL in Wordpress there, at least not easily and without a lot of time wasted re-writing code, and I don't need to worry about upgrading it since it's only accessible on the LAN.

You keep calling Wordpress CMS. Is it not just, well, BMS (as in Blog)?

I agree with you. GL it is not easy to install any plugin and themes. wordpress is easy to do even I don't know about any html code, I still know how to do it.

but I like GL too if they made a easy way to add any plugin and themes.

I don`t understand why Lee and n4th4n say that "theming is so simple"? You mean installing a new theme? What is the difference between WP and GL? As far as I remember you have to ftp a new theme in both cases.

You didn`t mean changing / creating a theme? That is definitely easier in GL as it only requires HTML and CSS. WP requires more skills and very complex CSS.
Some WP-plugins require changes to the theme and I found this pretty difficult to do. Finally I managed but I didn`t understand what I had done.

@n4th4n: "WP Akismet spam filtering is a god-send", did you try the plugin badbehavior? It stops bot right in the access process.

I've never tried WP but adding an already created theme to GL is as simple as putting it in the Layout directory then selecting it. Now plugins on the other hand take a bit more work but I think it's that way for security purposes. Still if you have access to the core area of GL then most Plugins are pretty easy too. Drop the plugin into into the Plugins directory of the core, then copy Admin and Public_html files to your site. Then its click a button and your done. There may however be some configuring to do with a plugin and that's probably the biggest pain to deal with.

One thing that I found though is the folks who write their plugins on a Linux box sometimes don't consider those one a windows box and maybe don't test it. However I'm just as bad going the other way. I write on a windows box and don't test on the Linux box.

I haven't had a spam issue since I upgraded to GL 1.4.1 and installed the Captcha plugin.

This is only my opinion, GL and WP is same as two Cars. one is 5speed and one is automatic. this mean when I want to add a plugin to WP, I just ftp to wp-plugin folder and login to Admin cpanel and enable there that sit. on GL I have to ftp to gl-plugin folder, Admin folder, and public_html folder with make some change in gl-config.php to made that plugin work.

sorry for my writing, it is not good enough.

Geeklog 1.3.3 had an automatic plugin installer. I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing they ditched it because it was a probably dealing with permissions issues. Geeklog believes in security and the reason you need to put files in multiple locations is to help with that security. WP, like most CMS/blog software out there just dumps all plugin files in your webroot. Such a setup can be secure but Geeklog at least tries to make it safer.

There is no doubt that plugins are not so easy to install. But I doubt that WP has easier to install or change themes.

OK, well enough people have said that GL theming is easier, so it must be true, right? Well, I used GL for a lot longer than WP, and I've found WP far simpler. Yes, I know a lot of CSS and PHP already, so perhaps I am ignoring a possible learning curve there. I was talking about designing themes, but I've found that installing them is very simple in WP. Most old functions continue to work even after upgrades, so a lot of time I can just leave the old functions in template files, or choose to use an older template without issue which is handy. I'm not here to slam GL though - I love it, and still use it, or I wouldn't hang out here reading this stuff!

For years I was on Geeklog.
Then I switched to WordPress.
After 6 months I returned back to Geeklog.

Do you want a BLOG with nice themes? Use WordPress.
Do you want a REAL CMS ? Use GEEKLOG, it's THE BEST !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kreative, Wordpress is by defition a BMS (B as in blog) and not a CMS, so what are you trying to prove?

Doesn't Wordpress manage your content? I think that makes it a CMS, unless all your blog posts are shit and contain no content.

I'm pretty familiar with Geeklog so anything else scares me.