journal software

Happy Birthday to Lissa Allcock and Beckett Gladney today!

Jeff and I are going to the cottage on the weekend with his parents and our niece Brittany, so I might not be able to catch up on weekend Blatherings until Monday. Unlike Greymatter, I can backdate and pre-date entries, making it much more convenient! Speaking of which, here's the journal software summary I promised a while back...

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Comparing Online Journal Software
(A Blatantly Non-Objective Report by Debbie)

Background: I've had an online journal since April, 1997. I posted my entries manually the first few years (i.e. worked with raw HTML), but then started experimenting with some of the available blog/journal software that would make it easier to manage administration and design layout changes. I started using and/or experimenting with Greymatter, Livejournal, and Movable Type.


* GREYMATTER *

Free (donation encouraged). You have to install it on your own server.

-- PROs: easy to install, highly customizable, software being actively improved by users in Greymatter community, good user documentation, can have multiple authors with their own password access

-- CONs: can't backdate or pre-date entries, no guaranteed support, not database-driven, can never truly delete entries, you have to install software multiples times for each blog/journal you create

* LIVEJOURNAL *

Free (pay for extra features and no ads). Most people use Livejournal's hosting service, but my sys admin installed it on his server.

-- PROs: good for blogs and for those who are happy to use provided templates, no installation worries (good for non-techies), database driven

-- CONs: recent server problems sometimes cause hosted journals to download slowly or not at all (so much that some have fled the official Livejournal server and are now hosted on my system administrator's Livejournal server), not suited to one-page-a-day journals, software not being actively improved, not as easily configurable as others, abysmal user documentation

* MOVABLE TYPE *

Free (donation encouraged). You have to install it on your own server.

-- PROs: easy to import Greymatter entries, elegant user interface, excellent user support (free in forum), software frequently improved and updated by the original creators (who interact frequently with users to find out what features need to be improved or added), highly customizable, can backdate and pre-date, can put entries on hold until you're ready to post them, excellent user documentation, you only have to install the software once and then can create as many blogs/journals as you want (with different users)

-- CONs: not database-driven, can be somewhat tricky to install, tricky to import Livejournal entries (I was never able to do so successfully so had to enter them by hand...this was more the fault of Livejournal than Movable Type, however)

Summary...

I'm happiest by far with Movable Type, was least happy with Livejournal. I liked Greymatter, but I didn't like the fact that you couldn't really delete entries and also that you couldn't backdate (which meant that I could never get my old archives into a consistent layout). I liked Livejournal's database-driven process, but found that it was much better suited to blogs than journals. I also found the software buggy and inconsistent (variables changed across different templates even if they referred to the same thing, much confusion here). I'm sure the bugginess is invisible to those who are content to use the readymade templates, however, and part of the problem could have been because of the version that was installed on my sys admin's server.

Many thanks to Josh Allen for pointing me in the direction of Movable Type in the first place. :-)

Writing Update

- Did manage to send out three queries on Wednesday (Marketing/Finance Day), got a tentative go-ahead (it'll be on spec) for one of the articles.

- Got a snailmail rejection, second in a row from the same publication (popular women's magazine). I'm taking this as a challenge and am going to keep sending them queries until they get so tired of seeing my name that they accept a piece just to shut me up. :-)

- Wrote and submitted two articles yesterday. I have a third one due today, one due next week, and another due at the end of the month. Cartoon to accompany my Country Connections article due at the end of the month, too.

- My novel writing is suffering, so I'm going to pick a an entire day next week just for it.

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Today's Blatherpic:

I got this picture from Graham Leathers, a publicity shot from "Lunar Prospects", a work-in-progress. Gray says that the projected debut is at Fringe Festival in 2003.

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