Libervis blogs improvements

Thanks for good suggestions. To be honest improvements to blogs.libervis.com are long overdue now. It's actually the lowest priority on the network as the two main sites are, from my point of view, Nuxified.org and Libervis.com.

I've been considering switching to Wordpress MU for it, but that has huge migration complications. The current system could be upgraded and extended with some additional plug-ins so some of the things you suggested may be possible (like tags).

As for URL's, I've also been considering moving the whole thing to a new domain name as a new site which may then make it possible to have subdomains like you mentioned. I'd just need to make sure that hosting supports that kind of thing.

But, considering the existence of Wordpress.com and how good it actually is, it does sometimes occur to me that blogs.libervis.com may be filling a space that's already been filled properly. Wordpress.com seems like an excellent service, powered by Free Software and ran by some cool people (AFAIK) which hosts many Free Software friendly blogs. Makes me wonder what more can we really offer..

Gotta think about it.

Just checked this and looks like Wordpress MU (multiuser) has reached 1.0 and simplified its requirements to something I could quite meet.

So here's what we could potentially do:

• Buy a new hosting and domain name (which is preceded by a fun make-up-a-new-domain-name job).
• Put WPMU on it exclusively and set it up to have friendly URL's for bloggers (seems like a mere .htaccess would do the job)
• Design an attractive homepage (much more attractive than the current mostly spartan Wordpress.com)
• Add a simple page introducing people to this alternative Wordpress blogging service, by whom is it offered and what are the benefits (hmm, we'll need to see which, indeed, would be the main benefits ).
• If possible, manually export/import existing blog content to the new blog site (depends on the similarity of database structures of the two). In the worst case I guess we could keep the current blog site running and let existing bloggers decide wether they want to migrate to new site or not.

But of course we'd need to have something to differentiate with. Maybe it could be just a domain name (if it's shorter and more attractive than "wordpress.com" people might like it more), but we should probably have something more. Maybe we should emphasize it as more specific than Wordpress.com, for the Free Software and Free Culture communities rather than everyone.

This is a second day no-one's posted here. Cold weather and an xmas rush?

Anyway, I have a test install of wpmu and it seems much more usable today than the last time I tried it, though new blogs created by it give 503 server errors when I try to access them, which may have something to do with the fact it's in the subdirectory instead of public root for which wpmu was really suited.

It can't be in public root on this domain though so the only way I can fully test and implement it is to buy a new domain/hosting package for the blog network. So I have a decision to make, will I do it or not? It's a question of whether it's worth it to maintain a third full scale project site. Considering that we've already had blogs.libervis.com it's maybe just making a "subproject" into a real project.

The benefits of Wordpress to me seem rather obvious from the fact that it is a well known and well supported software that many bloggers may be familiar with. It has a loads of themes, plugins and other stuff. Running LifeType as we do today may be a differentiator, but if it has certain shortcomings and isn't as easy to maintain as WP might not the best option after all.

Even though we'd be running WP (as, sort of, anyone else) we can differentiate in design, specifying target audience, the fact that most of relevant Libervis Network blogs are going to be featured in Libervis.com or Nuxified.org blogwires etc.

So, what do you think about the whole idea of separating the blogs project into a new site powered by WP? (For existing blogs, some sort of a migration policy is possible, most notably the few active blogs could be moved by hand or a mysql export-imports).

Thanks

Personally I don't see the need to move to a new domain/hosting. IMO blogs.libervis.com is fine. Now I've never used wordpress, so I don't know how it is for blogging. What I do know is that I dislike the WYSISYG editor the current blog software has (I always revert to the html editing mode). The best imput method I've come accross has been the simple Drupal one where one gets line breaks automatically, but anything like links you must code yourself - but I do see this may be a problem for people who don't care to know html. Another vexation I have is the main blogs page, it seems a bit bitty and crude, I think a re-cssing of the page would go down well.

I'm not sure about the need for another wordpress based blogging system run as a full project, I do think a subproject running blogs for FOSS people is good. I'd think wordpress would be good if it could be run in a subdir, but otherwise I think we should look at other blogging CMSs.

dylunio

Unfuzz your thoughts!

Costs:
- extra domain name
- possibly extra hosting
- annoy some users because the transition won't be supersmooth

Benefits:
- better user interface (?)
- POSSIBLY more users
- better search engine attraction, cause it is another top level domain linking to libervis

Are the costs worth the benefits?

Unfuzz, good word.

I think the WordPress interface is much better than the current one. It is also better in terms of support and plug-ins (and hence potential customizations) available as well as maintenance and more control to users over their blogs.

The top level domain name goes a long way, not just for the search engines, but people as well, since the perception is a lot different. The blog net would have it's own separate name (not just Libervis Blogs, but something totally new) with which it can be identified with.

I think the benefits are significant. Will it be worth it also depends a lot on whether it has enough potential to pay for itself, and I think it can as I can have a bit of advertising shown on its homepage. The only additional cost is in hosting/domain, as even if we just keep with the current one it still has to be maintained.

About users being annoyed by migration I think that pretty much remains the main bottleneck in potential separation. That's why the input from current bloggers is valuable in this regard. I will have to look to the ways the migration of content could be done. It might just be possible to do it cleanly by first starting a given blog and then transfering blog entries via mysql exports post by post. And we don't have too many posts I think.

Also only the active blogs would be migrated, which leaves us pretty much only with dylunio, tbuitenh, Charles, Scott, myself and did I forget anyone?

Here are some WordPress features. That's a WordPress.com page and some of the features may be WordPress.com specific, but most of the things are available for free by means of plugins.

Since it would be sort of a competition to WordPress.com itself, although more specific, I've taken a look at the "products" they're offering. You can get a domain name transfered to them (or get a new one through them) for your WP blog, custom CSS editing and unlimited private blogs.

I'm thinking that an excellent way to compete with this would be to offer some of it for free ourselves, if software allows it (and I believe it does). They knew it all along anyway, that someone may come around and start offering some of these things for free. It's called competition so.. yeah.

One specific feature I am almost sure I can offer for free is custom CSS editing. I just don't see the need to charge people for using that plugin. I might find other cool features that may be offered for free on *our* WP-powered blog network. One that comes to mind is being able to choose between the rich text editor and plain (drupal style) editor (if this isn't already possible by default, I didn't check yet).

Although it's true that WP looks better than Lifetype...

If you're worried about the cost of a new domain/hosting that's not a problem really. I just wanted to emphasize that.

So, dylunio and charles, you vote for the blognet to stay as a subproject, but are not yet sure about the switch to wordpress?

I gotta say that if the switch is going to happen it would almost be required to put it on a separate host/domain since that's where it works best and since the cost doesn't matter too much and the migration is happening anyway, it just makes sense.

If we're to stick with LifeType then I guess I only need to do an upgrade and a facelift (though customizing LifeType looks seems a bit harder than WP as well).

Some things I would like:
- a nice way for providing downloads (the lifetype albums work but I don't care for them too much) so I can provide my projects in the same place as my blog about them
- a social network thing similar to livejournal friends lists
- a possibility to pay for extra space
- subdomains for everyone, not just me with openmind
- possibility to do un-bloglike things like project management

If WP can provide those, I'd say switch to that, on a new domain. If not, then I wouldn't mind sticking with lifetype although a better user interface would be nice.