Best blogging/podcasting software?

[radioclash]

I'm looking for open source software to do my blog with on my server that can also do RSS Enclosures maybe and the like.

Best for just blogging it seems is Wordpress or Textpattern - the latter I've installed but documentation is pretty much zero. But don't know if they can do podcasting enclosures/attachments?

Pretty cool if I could do a combined blog with podcasting attachments, as a category on my blog (I'm going to do other stuff, personal stuff, MP3 blog etc, but would want to set up a radioclash 'category' for posts to do with RC)

What say you? What do you use? What's best etc?

Tim

P.S. Please don't say Blogger... :roll: I have my BB and my site on my own host for a reason...(just search for weblogs.com and dave winer and you might guess why...I'm new to blogging but I don't want any AUP's, copyright issues or companies going phoom and taking my blog with it! I've lived through several web booms and busts and thus don't trust services like Blogger however good they may be, they don't always stay that way cf. Yahoo and Geocities)

[vinylpodcast]

Hi Tim,
I'd put in my vote for WordPress over Movable Type. It's open source, easy to set up, and a very quick change to the code allows for RSS enclosures. Current alpha versions of the software support RSS enclosures natively.

One caveat: For some reason, the auto-ping function in WordPress seems to have some difficulty pinging audio.weblogs.com, so I've been pinging it manually using pingomatic.com each time I post.

By the way, I really enjoy your podcast, especially when the bootlegs are in tune.

Cody
vinylpodcast.com

[radioclash]

hmm all these types of software make my head hurt! Thanks vinylpodcast and Ferf for your input tho, some more to think about...

OK this is what I found:

Textpattern doesn't seem to support enclosures

Movable Type used to be free last time I looked - not any more, and PERL scares me, I think I have limited PERL functionality on my site (I can't work out how to use PERL for other things so...)

Wordpress can do RSS enclosures as vinylpodcast said...cool! Only thing is the multiple blog thing and whether I can do err, non-bloggy looking things with it.

:?

Basically I need a mini CMS or a blog that can be made to look and act non-bloggy (menu categories or separate pages for menus etc.) and a multi-blog because otherwise I'd have to use 2 different blogs and a seperate CMS for the homepage and articles, and then try and get them to talk to each other... :shock:

I just want to use one thing, if that's possible...I don't want to have one blog for Radioclash, one separate homepage for Mutantpop.net with articles, and another mutant MP3 blog...

Oh and get my phpBB board to feed out the latest to my homepage would be nice :wink: You can do RSS feeds from phpBB so I know that's possible - you do that here?

Sigh. I just know if I choose one it will be wrong for the other things or be wrong in future. It's a big choice. :(


By the way, I really enjoy your podcast, especially when the bootlegs are in tune.

Cody
vinylpodcast.com

thanks! :D

Tuning? you must be a musician :wink:

[Craig]

I know you want open source but take a look at the way I'm using categories in Radio Userland to handle multiple podcasts:

http://www.godcast.org

Each category (and the home page) has its own RSS feed. Blog entries can be submitted to one or more categories using category checkboxes.

Craig

[rizzn]

I'm going to pimp my solution for a bit, but it's a very easy thing to do... it sounds like you aren't interested in creating a blog at all, so why not just create a standard php page, use some RSS headline software, then use my podcasting service (it's free) ... then you can list them however you like.

http://rizzn.net

[radioclash]

Thanks for all your comments, I did go with Wordpress (a recent 1.5 nightly alpha which supports podcasting) which was surprisingly trouble free, and I had a site up in a day with CSS mods and a few minor PHP hacks to the template...

http://www.mutantpop.net/radioclash/

It's still a little rough, need to do a navigation and make the text CSS a little more readable and fix problems with long lines not wrapping.

It's my first design that actually looks in part better in Firefox (the transparent left column is supposed to be so, but doesn't work in IE) - but then the text looks feck awful in Firefox, but good in IE, and the layers all shift in both, which I designed it to not break over, but being an autocratic designer type if I place something somewhere it's for a reason, I don't care what the browser thinks about it, *just do it*. Argh.

Sigh, such is the vagaries of CSS as a designer, this is why I don't like another browser entering the fray, cos although it's a lot better than it was with NS 4.0 *shudder* and Firefox is more compliant they all render pages slightly differently still, and I have to design around those 'undocumented features'.

Oh for a totally cross-platform standards-compliant browser...

[Craig]

FWIW it looks good in Safari on the Mac, transparency and all.

Craig

[cybercooler]

I use MT for one site and Wordpress for the other. Then I found the total solution and I never fire up a browser again It's called blogjet and its a desktop software ties into your blog http://www.shareit.com/product.html?productid=210466&affiliateid=200007113 (Pardon the obvious affilaite link... )

I love it, and you can get a 30 day free trial (which is how I gotsucked in). Makes it so easy to add graphics to your blog, It has an audio feature which I supposed is for enclousres. I use something else ot manage my multiple RSS feeds.

[Craig]

I use MT for one site and Wordpress for the other. Then I found the total solution and I never fire up a browser again It's called blogjet and its a desktop software ties into your blog
The home page is http://www.blogjet.com ... it's Windows-only. MarsEdit (http://ranchero.com/marsedit) is a similar product for the Mac but it doesn't have podcast support yet (there is an open bug from 1/15 requesting it so I wouldn't hold my breath). I assume BlogJet does.

Craig

[PCOSGurl]

I've been using WordPress for 3 other 'non-audio' blogs, but I'm going with BlogHarbor for my podcasts. There's something about the structure of BH that I like better, and it has lots of build-in features. (Thanks to The VU podcaster for turning me on to BH!)

[slodaddy]

Maybe I haven't searched around enough, but it seems that, by now, there should be an open source blog tool that also handles enclosures properly. I can't find it. Apparently the ones that work correctly also either cost money or require a hosting account. I simply want a blog tool that generates the xml with an option to add enclosures, and not erase any previous enclosures from the earlier xml file. And include the ability to ftp to my own host. Now, as a last resort, I treat my website's rss feed as a separate entity from the blog pages. I manually edit the xml file in notepad so I can manipulate the enclosures to correspond to the blog entries. Its not too much of a hassle, but I'd much prefer one blog tool that handles both tasks without any quirkiness... and is free. I did try Podifier for a while to generate the xml, and it was kinda cool, but each new xml page it generated erased any previous enclosures, and required me to upload the mp3 file in order to generate the xml. It didn't include any blogging tool either. At this time Thingamablog is my blog tool of choice although it doesn't handle enclosures or provide for visitor replies. So, I'm in limbo right now; my podcast page is simply standard html (I don't use any blogger to produce it), and the xml file is modified in notepad whenever I add a new podcast. Please, someone, turn me on to a blogging tool that meets these criteria: 1. Is free 2. Allows ftp to my preferred host 3. Creates enclosures without erasing previous enclosures 4. Includes archived blog entries in the xml 5. Permits me to opt for a second xml when the primary one becomes too large 5. Allows me to change templates at any time with no editing required. 6. Provides a style sheet that looks good with different browsers. 7. Gives me the option to choose whether or not to generate a new xml file. 8. Enables me to re-date and rearrange any enclosures or blog entries. 9. Provides an easy way to modify the style of the calendar. There are more options I would like, but I just can't remember them now. Sorry for the extremely long post.

[slodaddy]

Okay, you can disregard my previous post. I've discovered a nice bit of free software that works perfectly for me. I now use Thingamablog to create the website pages, then I use RSS Editor to generate the xml file. A sweet combination. If you try these be sure to disable Thingamablog from generating the xml.

[Craig]

Just out of curiosity, how did the latest version of WordPress not meet your criteria?

Craig

[slodaddy]

When I first checked out WordPress a few months ago, I didn't have a MySql database or php. Now I'm on a new host with sql and in the process of installing WordPress as we speak. Thanks for steering me back to a good thing that I've been overlooking. Obviously I should have done more research before ranting.

[slodaddy]

Thought I'd post a followup on the WordPress topic, Craig. The two minute install is not a joke, it's great. I really like the program and it does meet all the criteria listed in my initial rant, with the exception of ftp to my preferred host. Of course that's not important because it is installed on the server. I installed the latest release and then spent a few hours going nuts because the rss feed was acting peculiar. After searching the suppot forum at wp, I discovered the rss problem is common among users of this release. Apparantly wp is using a new protocol to call the rss that isn't yet supported by all browsers and clients. A simple modification to the template footer gets it working perfectly. Just remove the two instances of Feed: in the footer. Only remove the word and colon, leave the code. I would guess that any templates other than default would work correctly. I'll try some different ones today. Peachy - keen.

[Patrick]

I just installed Loudblog - www.loudblog.com.

It's pretty easy, customizable and has a lot of features.

[Just Some Dude]

I use Wordpress on one of my blogs and I have to agree it was easy to set up, however finding a blogging client was a bit difficult. Mars Edit on my Mac produced the best results. The Windows clients I have used didnt' fare to well as there were little bugs here and there.

With my two new sites I am going a different route and using something called MaxDev.

http://www.maxdev.com/

This is a bit harder to set up and install, but has a ton of features. It's not really a blogging plugin but more of a BBS plugin.

-Tim

[monkey_one]

I just installed Loudblog - www.loudblog.com (http://www.loudblog.com).

It's pretty easy, customizable and has a lot of features.

I just loaded Loudblog and nothing works
Thanks for nothing Patrick .......

[keifer]

I just installed Loudblog - www.loudblog.com (http://www.loudblog.com).

It's pretty easy, customizable and has a lot of features.

All I saw was site under construction :confused:

[Webzu]

All I saw was site under construction :confused:

They must have come and gone. That's the nice thing about wordpress they've been at it awhile, it's open source so developers are always working at it, and although you never know, I doubt they'll sputter out like loudblog.

[lyzz]

http://loudblog.de/forum/

You can still access the loudblog forums, though.
Maybe there is some download links in there. ;)

[proitservice]

Hello Guys,

I'm a Web Developer and from a customer oriented view point I should emphasize the Movable Type versatility versus WordPress

While it is indeed true that MT needs a bit of technical knowledge to get it up and running, once set it's customizable to your very requirements.

As a consultant I always build up publishing platforms that are extremely easy to administrate by non technical people. My chosen platform is MT.

Would you like to see a sample of what Pod Casting Web sites I've developed?

Just go the most recent one: http://www.arcelormittal.tv/



Good luck,
Mihai Bocsaru

[podcastingpoet]

I'm just considering what software to use, and I'm tempted to use blogger - mainly because I already have a non-podcast blog there, and figure it would be easier if I'm already familiar with it...

[podcastingpoet]

I'm just considering what software to use, and I'm tempted to use blogger - mainly because I already have a non-podcast blog there, and figure it would be easier if I'm already familiar with it...
I did a test podcast blog on blogger and didn't like it much.

I then made a free blog on wordpress, and quite liked the layout.

Then I got wordpress installed on a server and set it up on my domain - loving it. Plugins are brilliant, and it's very easy to navigate.

Thumbs up for wordpress from me!