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Best Blogging Platform? (bye-bye Worpress)

by LiamElliott
5 replies
I have been using wordpress for year as it is the leading self-hosted blogging platform and many people use it. I am growing tired of it's Ikea(put it together yourself) methodologies.

The main reason I want to switch is that the text formatting that comes stock with wordpress is pathetically simple for 2011. This leads to the posts looking simple and do-it-yourselfer like. It creates wall text in it's default state, not to mention you can't choose your own font type or colour. It is hopeless to change anything without manually modifying the css stylesheet.

I have been looking at other self hosted blogging platforms that offer lots of the same functionality as wordpress. I just want to paste the post in, form the paragraphs and lists, insert images where I need them etc. This is essential when you're getting a new blog up and running. I want to write the posts and publish them without problems, then move on to whatever I was doing. Right now, I have mce editor installed and I have to change the font family and weight, size etc. for every single paragraph and line. This is my one and only beef with wordpress, everything else is great.


I have even investigated using joomla with a blogging plugin. I am also looking at b2evolution, moveable type etc. Are there any others that I should be aware of or use and why?

Thanks,

Liam
#blogging #byebye #platform #worpress
  • Profile picture of the author sodevious
    Because you need to either create a theme yourself or add a different one. I can't imagine it'd be much different anywhere else.
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  • Profile picture of the author Michael Truong
    Look for some custom wordpress templates (there are others that include cool css styles with them too) just google for it they are definately out there.

    I think wordpress has one of the best blogging platforms around and with so many plugins being developed for it... I would definately stick to wp.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Hi Liam,

      I was writing a longer reply about Moveable Type until I moticed you'd already mentioned it in your own OP.

      It's the heavy-duty "older sister" of TypePad, which I use ... and very highly recommended by the author of "Blogging For Dummies", and is self-hosted and (I think) free. I'm very happy with TypePad's hosting, myself (though it's certainly not free) as well as their software ...

      If you don't need anything quite as big/sophisticated as Moveable Type, personally I wouldn't exclude TypePad just because it's not self-hosted, because their hosting is really very good ... just saying ... :confused:

      Good luck.
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  • Profile picture of the author UMS
    You obviously haven't come across the "Tiny MCE Advanced" plugin for WordPress that allows you much greater control over your formatting.
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  • Profile picture of the author Istvan Horvath
    I just want to paste the post in, form the paragraphs and lists, insert images where I need them etc.
    Provided you paste it as a plain text (not as some Word monstrosity with a bunch of code that are NOT web compatible)... everything you listed is a piece of cake and very easy to do: form paragraphs, make lists etc.

    The problem always is with users that don't understand the basics of a CMS; any CMS not only WP. (Liam, this is not personally directed against you; it's a free advice for anybody using content management systems...) The basics means you have a template (in WP called theme) that defines the look of your content. The content sits in the database as... err, data and it can be displayed in any way you want - using the otherwise empty template of the CMS system you have installed.

    That's the whole idea of a CMS: you don't need to format every paragraph, every line, every list, every whatever of yours as in a hand-coded HTML page/file. The content is sitting as raw data in the database and the engine (WP core files) takes care of the queries you are running, i.e. "show posts in XYZ category & 7 posts on a page & show only excerpts". The engine takes the content that fits in that request and sends it to the template to display it.

    Now, if you want every page, every post to look different (which is a HUGE "design" mistake made by people who have no idea of web design) - then you should NOT use WordPress or any other CMS.
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