Actual Weblog Software, as promised

After two days of testing, tweaking, and submitting bug reports for the various weblog products that are available for Plone, I'm finally up and running on COREBlog2 with Plone 2.5.

(the old stuff is here)

It hasn't been fun - the state of weblog products for Plone is not so hot. It's no wonder that even Plone veterans seem to be avoiding Plone for their personal weblogs... Sidnei da Silva is using WordPress ("something that would just work"), and Andy McKay's personal site, also a WordPress joint, is sporting a "not powered by Plone" tagline. What's up with that?

COREBlog2 wasn't my first choice... more like my third. I really wanted to use Quills, because I like the approach that it takes to working with Plone - that is, using what Plone already offers, such as threaded commenting, and keeping its weblog-specific functions like trackbacks and syndication in discrete, reusable modules. But Quills is in a perpetual state of unfinishedness, at least in my experience. It takes way too much fiddling to get it to work the way I'd like it to (or at all). Still, some people seem to be using it successfully, particularly over at The Plone Blog. I'm confident that Quills will one day be the premier blogging product for Plone, and I'll probably use it when it is.

So, I mentioned that COREBlog2 was my third choice - my second was EasyBlog. It's got some good things going for it: highly configurable, comment and trackback moderation, and a nifty management portlet that gives you quick access to all of the blog settings. It's definitely worth a look if you're looking to blog on Plone 2.1.x. I was all set to use it, but it went haywire after I upgraded this site to Plone 2.5.

In the end, the only thing that worked out-of-the-box was COREBlog2, and I'm mostly satisfied with it. I wish it had a threaded comment implementation and archives-by-date, but I can live without it for now. I'm pretty much low-volume in terms of entries and visitors, so the bells and whistles won't be missed.

If you're contemplating setting up a weblog on Plone, here are some resources you might find useful:

• Plone weblog products @ plone.org
• Blogging and Plone, a wiki "to rough out ideas related to blogging in Plone"
• The Plone Blog - Jon Stahl, the primary contributor, is very passionate on the subject of Plone weblogs
• plone-blogging mailing list, also available at Gmane