Nice article - interesting to see what platforms different sites run on!

Great article!
Never heard of Movable Type. Gonna try that one time:)

There is one unique software “YikeSite” written in Rails and has one of the easiest interface. But comes as a Self hosted app. which enables all kind of users to manage pages easily, and lets a n00b to run his own website. And Still on the phase of development
Link [yikesite.com]

and what about Link [www.dotclear.net] ?

Really nice post but what about Php-fusion? In my opnion it is just as good as many of the above menhtioned CMS systems

“Up until this point, we haven’t even mentioned any blog software that runs on any other language other than PHP”
MovableType runs python.

Nice article, but I still like Wordpress just becuase it is so easy to use.

Link [www.dtsn.co.uk]

nice post…. i think it’s very hard to get wordpress from it’ throne… but movable type is doing a good job so far.

dotclear is french which doesn’t help the userfriendlyness….

Textpattern doesn’t “rely” on textile. You can of course, write in HTML or install the TinyMCE extension and enter content in a word processor like interface.

Erenon: MovableType is built with PHP and Perl AFAIK.

What about Blogger ? (http://blogger.com/)

Just to let you know, the url for Movable Type above is broken (has a space in it)

There are also a lot of other blogging engine written with other languages, like Ruby or .NET.
You should mention them as well sometimes

ExpressionEngine is really geared for people who are trying to start a multi-blog site

Expression Engine is geared towards the simple brochure site, through single blogs, simple ecommerce to multiple sites to whatever you need to publish. As their site says, ‘Publish Your Universe’, not matter how big or small it is.

And they do have a free version, if you are setting up a non-commercial, personal blog.

The beauty of Expression Engine is that it allows you to expand when you need to because the functionality to do so is built in, thus removing the need for endless hacking around with plugins that other blogging-only platforms have.

Interesting article overall, but seems to lack evidence of proper research.

I use ExpressionEngine for most of my development. Having tried almost all the others listed, I stuck with EE due to the fact that it acts almost more like a framework than an out of the box blogging system. I realize that may not appeal to a lot of people, but it’s helped me to build some pretty complicated sites without needing to take a refresher course in database development.

I understand that not so many web designers use asp.net but there is one outstanding open-source engine written in asp.net: BlogEngine.NET (www.dotnetblogengine.net). It is incredibely easy to customize, both functionally and visually.

Here is my overview of this engine, if you are interested: Link [www.jankoatwarpspeed.com]

From the server-side, I really like Link [www.pivotlog.net].
It is php-based, but writes to files. No SQL-Server needed.

Programming language.
Many blog platforms run on either PHP or Rails, but you can find just about any flavor of programming language you are looking for.

In a list of 10 items is 90% PHP (9 items) and 10% RoR (1 item). Now that is convincing that most run on either PHP or Rails. That opening trashed my whole opinion about this article.

It’s terrible article!!!

I’ve recently switched from Textpattern to Expression Engine after almost 3 years. They both have a really easy to use templatingsystem which is great if you build your own themes. Wordpress has a steeper learning curve when it comes to custom themes.

The reason why I switched from Txp to EE is because Txp lacks a lot of functionality and is not as flexible as EE. With EE you can customise the new post interface to your liking. For instance, adding a second text area is a real pain with Txp (it requires some hacking in the code), but with EE it’s really simple.

Another big plus is that EE is more complete. Although Txp has a lot of great plugins, you simply need less with EE.

So if you’re building a more complicated (magazine like) website, you’re definately better off with EE. If you’re looking for a reliable, fast and free cms, you will probably do just fine with Txp!

Another site powered by Expression Engine is Barack Obama’s campaign site.

Expression Engine 2.0 is being built from Code Igniter which is completely Open Source and community driven.

I’m shocked that Blogger didn’t even get a mention in this list! Next to Wordpress, this is one of the most popular (and documented) Blogging services, used by millions of Bloggers all over the world.

Is there a particular reason (or bias) why Blogger was not included?

Movable Type is written in Perl not Python. Also if you use dynamic publishing it uses php.

I’m a little surprised that Link [www.modxcms.com] didn’t make the list. Very flexible, easy to install, suitable for both novices and developers, and allows for complete custom application development.

Definitely worth a look!

Thanks for the great article Glen.

I’ve been thinking about starting a blog for my network of websites, so your roundup has helped me figure out “who’s who” in the blog software game.

besides assigning one article to multiple categories and having sub sections and categories, joomla is the only way to go. Even wordpress is a joke comparing to Joomla!

Link [www.sweetcron.com] “lifestream” was released yesterday. I have just got it installed but not skinned.

I would check it out if you’re looking for something to aggregate feeds (flickr, twitter etc.) and do some light blogging. Its crazy easy.

Chris
Link [www.unravel.ca]

Great reference! Thanks for the excelente job!

What about Dotclear and its last amazing release 2.0.1 ?

Tast it now!

Link [www.dotclear.net]

Funny to see Mephisto here as it’s not a blogging software but more a CMS. And btw, there is a much more active, old and complete blogging software in ruby on rails with plugins and lots of very nice themes. It’s called Typo

As often in english spoken article, few interest is given to the internationalization stake. One of the big disadvantages of the blog platforms you present is the lack of full internationalization.

DocClear, a french blog engine, is really a good choice with very few bugs, a great stability and a good internationalization. The version 2 has just been released. Give it a try, it worths it.

Thanks for this very good article either.

Nope, MT runs Perl

dotclear is french which doesn’t help the userfriendlyness….

@jbcarey :
DotClear has always been available in English, since its beginning, and in a lot of other languages. I’m really surprised not to see it in this list.

I currently use WordPress, but am currently making the move to Link [www.squarespace.com]. I have tested numerous platforms over the years and IMO, Squarespace is easily the best out there. It’s not free, but it’s worth it for its ease of use and customability. You can read my review of their new V5 platform Link [geekinheels.com].

Joomla is terrible.

Great overview! I’m a serious Wordpress fan though.

I use Habari - the Admin interface is superb, the article editor simple and uncluttered and a variety of themes and plugins support all the key functionality required for a blog.

While Habari has some rough edges, it is actively being worked on with new features being added daily. Don’t be deceived by the 0.5 - Habari is perfectly capable of running a blog - today.

b2evolution is a good bloggin app.

vBulletin appears to have an official addon to add a full featured blog software to your online community forum.

You don’t mention Link [habariproject.org], why not? It’s a very nice new blogging application, that is quickly growing into the platform that WordPress was supposed to be, but without making the same mistakes. It’s focus on usability, good design and a sane architecture, combined with being community-driven, make Habari a winner in my book.

Also it should be noted that several popular packages such as Joomla and WordPress are continuously encumbered by security issues.

Are you sure that Gawker blogs are running Movable type? According to Link [www.cmswire.com] they are:

using Gawker’s own custom publishing platform (with a hacked Movable Type UI)

I know this has already been said, but this article did not mention blogger.com…

Nice article. The link you provide to CMS matrix is to their Link [www.cmsmatrix.com]Link [www.cmsmatrix].com/
site. Did you intend linking to their Link [www.cmsmatrix.org]Link [www.cmsmatrix].org site, which provides the CMS comparison matrix?

Paul.

Link [www.getpepper.com]

@ erenon: it would be great, if mt would be programmed in python. unfortunately it’s the read-only perl.

Dooce is no longer powered by Movable Type. They now use Drupal, as explained Link [blurbomat.com].

ExpressionEngine is really geared for people who are trying to start a multi-blog site

I disagree with the above statement. That is definitely one of it’s pluses with the “Multi Site Manager” but definitely not who EE is targeted for. I’d venture to say that majority of EE users do not have a multi-blog site.

As was said above, they also have the free “Core” version of EE, so it’s not just a paid platform. I run two sites with the free “Core” version.

Don’t forget about Telligent’s offerrings - Community Server and Link [www.graffiticms.com] These are both written in .NET and easy for .NET developers to customize and extend.

Would like to add Link [www.getpixie.co.uk] to the list - great to customize and simple to use.

Another Expression Engine user.
It is so much more than a blogging tool, I have built several sites on it due to the flexibility of the way you can store and access data. You can create multiple data fields and customize them in many ways.
It is a framework that you use to build custom sites, rather than just another weblog.

That’s a nice article. But I’d recommend you add to the list of additional ressources this in-depth review of 10 Blog & CMS engines : Link [www.theartcompany.org]

I think your summary of ExpressionEngine was really shortsighted, and I’m sure thousands would agree with me. ExpressionEngine isn’t primarily geared for multiple-site blogs — that’s just a simple feature. It’s REALLY geared for mind-blowly flexible content management. Sure, it does blogs well. Ridiculously well in fact. But due to the nature of it’s expression tag system, it allows someone without knowledge of PHP actually build out custom features and functionality right into the HTML/CSS. The sky is pretty much the limit in the type of site you want to build.

It really fits for nearly 95% of all client work in my case — full corporate sites right down to a simple blog, all easy, all flexible. I recommend everyone checking it out!

You should check out Symphony. It’s XML/XSLT based, so the learning curve is a bit steep. It’s more of a full CMS rather than a blog engine, but can do blogs easily. Verson 2 is almost out of beta and rocks. My current fav CMS — and I’ve used a lot!

I’m assuming this review was for non-hosted blogging solutions, since platforms like Link [www.typepad.com] and Link [www.squarespace.com] aren’t listed.

For example, I still haven’t found another platform that compares to Squarespace in it’s ability to structure your site before you add content to it (since most others you structure your site after you add content, as you need something to work with). I mean I don’t need a site map from my clients because their content structure (shown within the Architecture area of Squarespace) almost replicates this.

Even more so, I have yet to see another CMS provide a built-in Style Editor like Squarespace. I mean you’d have to purchase a desktop solution like Link [www.skybound.ca] to get something comparable.

All said and done though, it is a hosted solution and it limitations are what you pay for it’s simplicity and ease of use. With Version 5, you no longer have access to templates but they are working on ways to let you edit anything (with about 95% achieved now), so there won’t be a need to mess with XHMTL code. However you can play with CSS as much as you want, as it’s CSS template structure is probably the best I’ve seen versus other solutions. In a nutshell, Squarespace is optimized for “designers” rather than developers. So those who prefer immediately visualizing and conceptualizing their content, layout, and designs without having to play with too much code in the back end will probably like it considerably.

I get the impression that whoever wrote this article hasn’t actually USED all of these systems. Some of the information here is false or misleading, and the rest of it is too general and doesn’t really speak to the essential qualities of the various platforms. Terrible article!

And regarding Textpattern - you do NOT need to use textile to publish in Textpattern. It’s actually one of the few platforms that you can use straight HTML/CSS/PHP with - one of the few systems where you don’t have to muck around with some silly template system, and can just develop your pages “normally”.

Textpattern forever :-) With PHP knowledge you can do wonders with Txp.

We didn’t include blogger because we were focusing on only blogging software, not hosted solutions. It’s a great blogging service though! :)

Drupal and Text Pattern are CMS. If you mention Drupal you can also talk about Joomla and others which can have same blog features. All these systems you said are made to download so I can think that’s why you don’t talk about Blogger and Vox. Am I wrong? Regards…

@L2: You can find a blog platform for just about any language. I chose to focus on the most widely-used software, which unfortunately is mostly PHP.

There are 2 simple file based blog apps:
Link [hardkap.net]
Link [pplog.infogami.com]

I found that these are very user friendly and especially suit for purposes of writing personal diaries or personal blog’s.

Expressionengine si not just a blogging tool, it is true web cms. Lot of flexiblity, plus the templating language is supreme to WP and movable type. Have you guys every really looked at these system before recommending them.

I HAVE througly reviewed most of the systems you listed. A pretty interface is one thing, but the templating system and flexiblity is the core of the system. Expressionengine wins hands down.

Also, I do like Textpattern but not quite as much as EE. Templating engine is similar. But EE has more flexibilty built in without plugins. Also, EE’s documentation, user community, and support are extremely organized. Don’t take good documenation for granted especially. A system could be great, but if it’s not documented in a way a developer can use it who cares.

Last thing, look at the code you have to use for b2evolution to list the last 3 entries in a “blog”.

” title=”">

get_item() )
{ ?>

permalink() ?>” title=”">title( ”, ”, false ); ?>(issue_date() ?>)

“>

Take a look at EE:

{exp:weblog:entries weblog=”blog1|blog2″ limit=”3″}

{title}

{body}

Posted on {entry_date format=”%M %d, %Y - %h:%i %A”}

{/exp:weblog:entries}

enough said…

I’m looking for a really straightforward and simple cms. The primary need is to enable our partners to update their own websites. So the basic requirement is a multi-site capability. No fancy plugins needed. Simple and easy to use. Any suggestions?

what does smashing use for a platform?

I’m putting in my support for Textpattern. As stated, Textile is not required for writing blogs, but it makes it simpler to style text without having to explicitly know XHTML.

If you know XHTML and CSS, you can go far with TXP to build any kind of site, whether for blogging or commerce or business or whatever. Easy to install, easy to use and completely free.

ExpressionEngine looks promising as an alternative to TXP, but until they finish 2.0 and give users a file management system (already present in TXP), I’ll wait before I add it to my arsenal of CMS tools.

This is a post I’ve been waiting for for a while! I’m an avid user of Wordpress at the moment for my little design/portfolio blog Link [blog.epicerastudio.com], but for a while I was hunting around madly for which engine to commit to.

As a designer with a little programming experience (enough to build custom WP or EE themes at least), I really wanted something that would A) not require me to learn a ton of new information to setup and B) a platform that I could rely upon for easy content management once the site was built.

I tried out Expression Engine for quite a while (and liked it) before deciding that the open source aspect and thriving growth of the WP theme and plugin community is a platform that I don’t mind committing to because of it’s flexibility - plus it’s free. In any event, thanks a ton for summing up the top 10 blogging platforms.

As a side note, I love the UXMag site - one of the most unique blog designs I’ve seen. I only wish they updated their content more often - those articles have been pretty much the same on the front page sine last Feb as far as I can tell. Beautiful example of how far you can stretch a blog design.

@Gary Horsman:

There already is a “File Manager Module” that would give this functionality. It’s a third party module but from what I understand, it’s solid and works like it’s suppose too.

Ehem…I believe Dooce is using Drupal. >> Link [dooce.com]

Joomla is the worst. I’m surprised it was even considered - probably out of popularity, but that’s it.

Joomla’s output code is so useless it’s not even funny. I had to build a custom Joomla-based website from scratch (I used both versions to test which one was better - neither of them were decent), and I can honestly say that those 5 days turned that week into the worst week of my career.

Stay away from Joomla. Stay far far away.

As mentioned by some other people, Moveable Type is written in Perl and Dooce.com switched to Drupal a couple of months ago.

Thank You very much SmashMag

But DotClear is very wonderfull as Wordpress… but “français”

a french webdesigner

You should also not BlogEngine that runs on ASP.NET. It is one of the simplest blogging engines to setup and use and you can create new themes for it in litlerally minutes.

Textpattern is not just a blogging system, It’s full CMS. You don’t have to learn Textile there is a WYSIWYG toolbar plugin that takes a seconds to install. It has a very solid community and dev team. The templating language is beautiful, great for those that don’t want to learn PHP. It’s by far my favourite CMS and i’ve tried them all.

ExpressionEngine is also great for the bigger sites.

Expression Engine has a very feature-ful free version that I used to learn EE with. EE rocks.

Wow, I didn’t realize there were so many options. Our latest site Link [www.savedmarriagenetwork.com] is ran on Expression Engine. We use it as a content management system more than a blogging platform.

Great Article.

I love DLE - DataLifeEngine, the bad news is that it’s in Russian ( Link [dle-news.ru] ), but the good thing is that you can get the English language files for it, so not a big deal. This is the so called “English support” site: Link [www.datalifeengine.net] .

I also wonder why Habari wasn’t mentioned at all. I’ve published some thoughts on why that might be on my own site, in a post called “Link [h0bbel.p0ggel.org]“. Hopefully someone will pick up on the work being done on the Habari project and do a review of it. I think we deserve it. ;-)

b2evolution is a repulsive piece of shit. Completely unoptimized - if you have any level of traffic whatsover, you might as well send up smoke signals, b/c it will kill your server.

Wordpress FOREVER!!!.. I dont think u should have to ever pay for blogging software. Wordpress by far has exceeded its competitors obviously by being included in fantastico

err… and Blogger?

i translated it to turkish in my blog.

Link [adtechr10netseoyarismasi.net]

thank you very much for publishing a good review.

hey Umut, you are NOT allowed! Do not do this without asking for permission. (editor)

The link on Drupal - Joomla comparison is 1.5 yrs outdated and it doesn’t portray a true picture any more. A lot of progress has been made since on both systems and many points are not valid.

Lots of readers will now be going through that article without realising the fact that some major parts are not accurate any longer.

I’m surprised you have actually posted it, it’s misleading.

There is a typo in the DotClear link that breaks it, the ‘n’ should be removed.

DotClear used to have a whole section translated in English for non French speakers, but it seems this section has not came back yet on their new website…

what about Link [silverstripe.com]?

I’m a designer not a developer.

I tried a few CMS’s for my design portfolio. I chose EE in the end, for flexibility, the amount of features, and ease of use for a non-developer.

I would strongly recommend it to anyone.

I’ve used Wordpress, Joomla, and Drupal from that list!

@Glen Stansberry - Why would you consider hosted solutions not worthy of review? What is your rationale here? I would strongly suggest Link [www.squarespace.com] to anyone looking for a robust, hosted blogging/website creation tool.

Hello. It’s supposed to be Kevin Cornell, not Kornell with a K.

I use ExpressionEngine for most of my development. Having tried almost all the others listed, I stuck with EE due to the fact that it acts almost more like a framework than an out of the box blogging system. I realize that may not appeal to a lot of people, but it’s helped me to build some pretty complicated sites without needing to take a refresher course in database development.

This pretty much sums up my experience with it too.

I would recommend Chyrp for small and simple blogs. Very clutter free and intuitive. A young product that has a lot of potential.

Drupal and Joomla are montioned but not Link [www.dotnetnuke.com]?!?!

Anyone else here have had to suffer through Plone? It’s the only CMS used where I work. Terrible.

Love using Wordpress for my personal projects.

we only use Joomla for our work, its great for business sites
see some of our work at Link [www.duivesteyn.com.au]

You should also considere sNews for example, altough it’s not meant to be strictly blog engine, it is so lightweight and versatile that a little advanced PHP developer can pretty much run anything on that. For example I have developed an ecommerce solution and a medicinal appointment solution for doctors on that. Everyone was thrilled about it.

Nice review!!!
I use a BlogEngine.NET in mi blog and is really nice, this is the creator’s url may you can make a review about they.
Link [www.dotnetblogengine.net].
Great!!

Dooce is powered by Drupal, not movable type.

Worth while review.

There are sites here that I assumed were using WP, but they’re not!

I really miss the blogging sofware ‘pivot’ in this list!

And the best off all: Drupal is Made in Belgium!!

movable type easy to design than others also expression engine. i use movable type on my site Link [www.3beyaz.com]

One thing you must definitely consider, if you plan to build a popular site is code quality and security. Drupal for example has a strong focus on security also monitoring 3rd party extensions and fixing security vulnerabilities, when they are detected. This is something very valuable since a badly written add-on may ruin your server.
Something else I deem important is search engine friendliness. Designers must be able to create templates that comply with Web standards and use semantic markup. There should also be support for speaking URLs built-in.
When it comes to usability, editors without HTML knowledge should be able to create nice looking posts and integrate media such as images. In this regards Wordpress excels and Drupal core can really be improved.

I can’t believe Squarespace is missing from this list. They offer one of the more powerful engines and are unique in their ease to customize.

Here is our blog engine for Joomla!, it names IDoBlog. You can see it on IDoJoomla.com

Quite surprised no-one has mentioned Link [www.silverstripe.com]. Yes, it’s billed as a CMS, but not too hard to set up as a blogging platform, and the user interface is one of the best I’ve seen for non-geeks.

sorry, wont do it again.

I’m also surprised ModX wasn’t used - love it and its built to standards compliance and free. Check it out Link [modxcms.com] .

The review of Joomla here (and in many of the comments) is highly inaccurate and outdated.

We only use Joomla in our business also, but we don’t typically design sites to be blogs, we do work for businesses and organizations.

Joomla as a blog platform exclusively might be a big of overkill, as Joomla is a CMS and quite robust. I’ve reviewed IDoBlog for the extensions directory (mentioned here in the comments) and it adds the multiple blogging features that Joomla previously was weak in.

I’m surprised at this because I read Smashing Magazine regularly and the reviews are usually thorough and on-target.

I find you can’t go wrong with wordpress.

the cms matrix link is wrong it’s .org not .com

Has anyone here tried Link [start.websitebaker2.org]? There doesn’t seem to be much documentation on it yet, but it looks like it has quite a lot of potential…

you might want to have a look at Edicy (http://www.edicy.com/). I’m actually considering moving my wordpress blog there.