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05/02/2002 Archived Entry: "Maintenance time"

It's maintenance time. I've been using Greymatter more than a year now, and I've been pretty happy with it, but I'd like some more flexibility. I've been looking at some different PHP/MySQL-based solutions, then Dan Bowman dangled b2 in front of me.

b2 looks good. It'll do just about everything Greymatter does, plus another feature, categories, that I've been wanting forever, and it permits a lot more extensibility. Better yet, it imports Greymatter content (I've already got all this content in a b2 system behind my firewall) and, theoretically, it allows an indirect migration path from Manila, so I can bring my 330+ entries over at editthispage under this roof as well. Some of that old content has been read 4,000+ times, so I'd love to be able to deliver it from a faster, more reliable source. And, for that matter, I'd like to be able to cross-reference some of it with the new stuff. I can't remember which generation some of my content is from, so I know no one else will either.

And yes, I can even bring in the long-lost static pages, and if I'm willing to take the time, I can enter them into b2. So I may finally have everything, from the first writings I did under the flag of "Bacon and Ice Cream" in the fall of 1999 to today, in one place. A lot of that stuff was garbage, as I was shaking off the rust and adapting to a new medium, but some of it was useful too.

So I'm hoping to have something live this weekend. It'll be quiet here until then.

I've never heard of b2 so I'll have to check it out myself, but have you looked at Movable Type? It supports multiple blogs, multiple categories for each log and a bunch of other stuff. Plus it's also undergoing regular development and improvement.

Posted by Glenn @ 05/02/2002 11:43 PM CST

I know MT is very popular, but since it's not database driven I'll run into the same issues I have now. I've got one thread going here that now has more than 210 replies and updates are way slow. With a database, the 211th reply takes no longer to process than the first did. I'm looking for scalability.

And with a database, there's no rebuilding/regenerating the site, which is a big plus.

b2's development community is also alive and active. It's missing a couple of things I'd like, but I've enlisted the help of one of my buddies who's a professional software developer to help implement those couple of things.

Posted by Dave F. @ 05/03/2002 11:59 AM CST

I've got the test system up at http://dfarq.homeip.net:8080. It's slower than I like but this machine serves up static pages really slowly too.

I haven't put a decent template on it, so it's plain looking. But I have entered about 6 weeks' worth of back-catalog stuff from Fall 2000 (pre-ETP) that's been unavailable online for a long, long time. I have to enter it manually, so it's slow going, but there's information there that I don't believe ever existed elsewhere, so I want to get it back out there.

Posted by Dave F. @ 05/04/2002 05:44 PM CST

Your right about the speed. Doing searchs on your database driven blog is much faster, so is the comment posting. You gonna have your software guy help get karma voting going on b2?

Posted by Gateramnn @ 05/05/2002 10:54 PM CST

b2 does rock. i'm waiting for an MT import function to really make the switch personally, but for all the new projects i'm involved in, it's b2 all the way. it's also personally much easier for me to fiddle with PHP than PERL.

however for smaller sites and bloggers needing ease of templating, MT still does rock. you can manage a whole site with the MT interface alone -- page creation, file uploading, the works. it's awesome.

but the speed difference between the MT DBI module and a PHP/MySQL driven site is significant.

i love blog software. i just do.

Posted by kd @ 05/06/2002 04:56 AM CST