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What do you recommend for a community blogging script?

by R Hagel
9 replies
Hi Warriors,

I'm interested in giving niche site members their own blogs on my site.

So for example, a site member could set up a blog at www.mymainsite.com/their_blog

I see community blog scripts floating around -- but I'm looking for your recommendations and experiences. What's your favorite? Which ones should I avoid?

Here are my basic requirements:

1. Easy for members to get up and running fast. (And for that matter, easy for the Admin to install and customize, too.)

2. I'm just offering blogs, so I don't need a social networking script or anything like that.


Many thanks in advance, Warriors!

Cheers,
Becky
#community blogging script #dirty magazines #whiskey with an e
  • Profile picture of the author ravijayagopal
    Wordpress mu is a great starting place. Gives you the familiarity of WordPress and the functionality of a multi-blog web site.

    You can also make some DNS changes to make your member blogs looke like:
    john.yoursite.com
    anotherblog.yoursite.com

    Just like at Wordpress.com.

    But remember, Mu can be a pain-in-the-butt to manage. They don't have good spam controls yet. You'll get a lot of spam signups, and for every such spam-signup, mu creates tons of new tables. And when you delete the signup, mu doesn't automatically clean up those tables.

    The last time I checked, managing even a low-traffic mu site was a real pain, even for a total techie like me. You'll need to further invest in mu-specific plugins to help you manage it better.

    If I were you, I would rather go with a hosted solution provider like ning.com . Simply pay them to have your own domain name, your own ads, etc.

    Hope this helps.

    - Ravi
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  • Profile picture of the author CT_Thomas
    There's also a script called "best Blog Script" that works pretty well and is unix based.
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  • Profile picture of the author Sam Rodrigo
    HI,

    Well, my first suggestion is like the other WP MU. Why? You'll get just about all the benefits of WordPress -in a multi-user format. I am using MU to develop lead generating sites for Members. It works great.

    ANOTHER OPTION is to do what WF is doing -- BLOGS with the vBulletin forum format. It depends how extensive you want it.

    You could do something like this:
    General site running on MAMBO CMS.
    Then vBULLETIN running linked by a page on Mambo.
    Then Blogs running within vBULLETIN.

    I just wanted to mention another option after WP MU. My suggestion will run an entire community and will make it easier for you to communicate with your audience as the TOP GENERAL.

    Success,
    Sam
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    • Profile picture of the author PhilG
      Originally Posted by Sam Rodrigo View Post

      ANOTHER OPTION is to do what WF is doing -- BLOGS with the vBulletin forum format. It depends how extensive you want it.
      I second this. Its a great combination of forum and blogs. Both are very popular today.

      Phil G
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  • Profile picture of the author R Hagel
    Many thanks for the recommendations, all. I'm very open-minded regarding my options, so if any one else has a recommendation for a script OR an entirely different solution, throw it my way.

    Thanks!

    Cheers,
    Becky
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  • Profile picture of the author Audrey Harvey
    Are there any disadvantages to setting up a regular wordpress blog for people on sub-domains? That would be pretty simple, but maybe there's a potential problem with that setup that I'm not seeing...
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  • Profile picture of the author R Hagel
    Hi Audrey,

    Thanks for your reply.

    In this case, I'm looking for something that people could do automatically. So rather than me manually setting up a regular WP blog on a subdomain, I'd like for folks to be able to enter a username, email, etc and boom... they have a blog.

    In other words, kind of like Blogger, or LiveJournal or even WordPress.com -- except on my domain (and for a niche market).

    Cheers,
    Becky
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  • Profile picture of the author bizdepth
    I agree with Wordpress mu. I trust Wordpress. That's it. Update is important for any script.
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