revjim.net

Blosxom turns out to be even cooler than I originally thought. It uses already existing system to allow ultimate flexibility and simplicity. It uses your existing operating systems file system to store the data and organizes this data using conventions you're already used to: file names and directories. It provides a simple and efficent method for filtering, searching, limiting, and styling the data that you provide. It allows for complete customization, and requires no administration interface. All of this in under 10k of code.

Blosxom's method of opertaion is so unique, and so simple that spin offs in many languages have been produced.

mod_blosxom is a C based Apache module that puts the power of Blosxom directly into the Apache engine. It has added support for mulitple authors and conditional GET.

PyBlosxom is a Python port of the Blosxom system. It uses an INI based configuration file, has implemented Preformatters (for doing all sorts of conversion on the text before it is output), caching, and an XML-RPC interface. Additionally, it is capable of accepting TrackBacks via MT's standalone TrackBack tool.

PHPosxom is a PHP port of the Blosxom system. It has added support for entry metadata, multiple authors, and conditional GET. Flavours are handled in a slightly different manner requiring only one file for each flavour. With metadata support, it is capable of remembering the date that an entry was initially created and therefore doesn't continue to advance the date every time the entry is edited. Version 0.6 is currently in beta and offers even more features such as a 75% increase in speed, a module/plugin system and much, much more.

Blojsom is a Java port of the Blosxom philosophy. Included are dispatchers for JSP and Velocity, as well as .jsp and .vm templates. Additionally, if there is another rendering engine that you'd prefer to use, it is easily extendable.

Phosxom is yet another PHP port of the Blosxom engine. The doucmentation is sparse (read: non-existant), so it's difficult to tell exactly what features have been added without actually reading the code. However, based on how the author's weblog works, it seems to be very powerful and clean. It seems to support comments, trackbacks and has some sort of RSS aggregator. It has a plugin/modules system, and comes with flavour files for RSS, RSS3, and ESF syndication. Additionally it supports searching. The author is currently adding XML-RPC functionality and possibly PingBack. It seems that the author is considering keeping some portions of the data in a database. I'm not sure how far he intends to go with this, however, it appears that comments and TrackBacks may already be stored in this manner. There is also a light version entitled Phosy that removes most of the added functionality making it much closer to that that Blosxom.

Aside from all of the alternatives, Sam Ruby uses Blosxom, and, that in itself, affords it mounds of credit in my book.

I intend to look into Phosxom and PHPosxom a lot more and will be posting more information on those applications in the future.