What is the quickest way to a very simple blog?

Question

I am about to start a new project and would like to document its development in a very simple blog.

My requirements are:

• self-hosted on my Gentoo-based LAMP stack (that seems to rule out blogger)
• Integration in a django based website (as in www.myproject.com/about, www.myproject.com/blog etc rather than www.myproject.com and a totally different site at blog.myproject.com)
• very little or no learning curve that's specific to the blog engine (don't want to learn an API just to blog, but having to get deeper into Django to be able to roll my own would be OK) According to the answers so far, there is a chance that this excludes Wordpress

Should I

a) install blog engine X (please specify X)

b) use django to hand-roll a way to post new entries and a page on my website to display the posts in descending chronological order

Answer 1

If you're the perfectionist kind, roll your own.

• It isn't that hard
• You learn something useful
• You'll get exactly what you want and need

Be warned that you may run into a quagmire fighting comment spam, fixing security holes, etc. But it'll probably be a fun project.

If you are the practical type and ready to face some integration pain, use an existing engine like WadcomBlog (Python) or PyBlosxom, or something completely different like MovableType or WordPress.

Here's a simple Django blog example to get you started.

Some pros and cons of rolling your blog engine this article by Phil Haack.

Jeff Croft apparently rolled his own as well.

Answer 2

Install Wordpress. It is the most common engine for a reason. It's PHP but will play just fine in your environment.

Answer 3

I've tried WordPress recently and am very disappointed. As long as you don't want to customize anything, all is well. But imagine you want to install a plugin to handle Markdown editing. There the trouble begins. The plugin architecture of WordPress is seriously screwd up. In the case of Markdown, this means that no good solution exists. The existing plugin is a series of (quite well-documented) hacks that fall apart at a hard stare.

I never intended to write the least bit of code for WordPress but the last few days, I've been knee-deep in PHP the whole time, hacking plugins as well as the WordPress core in order to make it work for my special scenario (which really isn't all that special, I'm just a perfectionist). Which is a pity, because the documentation of WordPress is more than just patchy. I don't use it anymore, I grep for functions and read the source. All in all, one of the less enjoyable OpenSource projects.

Answer 4

You can spend hours if not days customizing Wordpress with plugins, themes, etc... I would go with a 0 installation solution, such as blogger (https://www.blogger.com/start)
You can even use our own domain name with it if you need do.

EDIT: Plus, if you ever get slashdotted, digged or redditted, google can handle the traffic, your server probably can't.

Answer 5

For me, Wordpress is still the quickest & simplest to setup and get going. It can be extended to do pretty much anything or you can keep it real simple. Runs on PHP, but unless you want to write plugins for it, you never need to write code

Answer 6

Have a look at Blosxom. It's file-based, so no crufty database. The basic idea has been ported to different languages, pyblosxom is in Python.

Answer 7

I use PyBlosxom for my personal blog, and I think it is pretty useful if you need something minimalistic. The deployment is simple, as you need only the python runtime and cgi. You might want to have some basic knowledge of python at least if you are going to use it, though.

Have a look at Blosxom. It's file-based, so no crufty database. The basic idea has been ported to different languages, pyblosxom is in Python.

Answer 8

I wrote the engine for my personal blog in maybe 6 hours during one weekend, with comments, labels, simplified markup, sitemap, feeds and so on. It was great fun and I learned a lot of Django.

If you decide to go this way, look at generic views, this Django feature will save you much of work (and learn few useful tricks).

Answer 9

I Haven't tried it myself yet (other than the demo), but I've bookmarked Chyrp so that if I ever need to set up a quick & simple blog (kind of like you're describing) I could try this. So check it out, might be a good option for you.