It’s good to see you mentioning ExpressionEngine. I’ve been using it for years now and regularly persuade clients to choose it over WordPress. No there aren’t stacks of plugins, but that’s often because many of the modules are actually featured in the commercial version.

It’s much, much more than a blog software though. Multiple blogs (multiple sites even) can be managed from the user panel.

I would also say that the admin panel is actually very easy to get to grips with. Then again, with the release of V.2 around the corner, things are going to change again.

Personally, everytime I’ve tried to go back to WP for a project, I’ve ended up going back to EE because it’s just so solid.

I’m very surprised you didn’t mention TextPattern.

“Many MT users have often cursed MT after upgrades broke their site;”

Have had the same experience with WP myself.

Also, another pro of MT is that I find their community to a bit more helpful and easygoing. If you catch the WP support forums on a bad day some of the people who answer questions can be a bit condescending.

I’d love to try EE, but I’m not in the position to spend money on a blogging platform when WP does every single thing I need it to!

jon, it’s good to see other EE fans read here. Although I don’t use EE on my own site right now, the more complex a project is the more I usually am tempted to opt for EE.

EE is a solid platform and can easily be customized. Now I think of it, I should add the excellent documentation for EE to the pros.

Is the multiple blog option still available in the Core version? I must have overseen it. Not mentioned on the pricing/comparison list.

i never tried Habari actually it’s the first time i hear about that project . i checked it out and it really much simpler than WP .
just one question , what do you think about Joomla and Drupal !? and why you didn’t list both here ?

Lindsey, more than EE or WP, I consider Textpattern a full blown CMS and not a blogging platform. Agreed, both EE and WP can also be turned into a CMS with some knowledge, but I would call TXP blog software anymore.

You don’t need to invest in EE, the ExpressionEngine Core version is completely free and comes with everything one needs. And much more.

Agreed on the MT community.

Ameo, just as with Textpattern, both Joomla and Drupal are full blown CMSs. There was a period in my life when I used Postnuke and then Joomla, but they are way too complex just to run a blog.

I would go back to Joomla to create a corporate website. Actually forget that, EE (paid version) offers everything: decent forum module, commerce module, photogallery and still is blazingly fast.
My main gripe with Joomla is how hard it is to make the platform SEO friendly and how it kills the server when under load. Drupal and TXP are much better and much more elegant in that matter, but I wanted to restrict this entry to the more popular blog software platforms.

I’m quite surprised that you also mentioned Chyrp. I know it since January and really fell in love with it.

Chyrp . i tried it twice, the bad thing in new projects is you can’t get enough support or addons once you need ,
” i had this .htaccess problem and i couldn’t solve it untill 4 days passed also their IRC is dead ”
it’s as franky said ,, really good for BLOGGING but it need some extra community

This is interesting! I enjoyed reading your great post.Thanks for the valuable information and insights you have shared here.

Just blogspot and wordpress that i know great. when i was trying another blog platform , difficult for me to get themes or plugins..

thank u so much for this topic

It’s nice to see Habari making an appearance on the Bloggingpro pages again!

I want to be completely fair with Anil Dash’s comment on the Ask MeFi thread: Out of context the comment reads like he’s comparing Habari to Movable Type, which you should think strange if you’ve heard Anil evangelize his platform at all. Rather, he’s comparing Habari to WordPress in his statement. Still, I appreciate the comparison, and agree wholeheartedly.

Besides that, it seems like Habari is making huge advances all the time. Our 0.5 release will once again raise the bar, and hopefully we’ll be closer to enticing our own designers - who are understandably not as code-savvy as our developers - to switch to the platform they’ve helped create.

Regarding Movable Type: Written in Perl. Not every (small) webhoster might have an update Perl configuration;

What exactly is the implication here? MT requires Perl 5.8.1, which was released in 2003. Oddly, you make no such caveat regarding Habari’s PHP5 requirement, which is arguably much less common than Perl 5.8.1.

The point about upgrades breaking sites is almost always related to plugins, not the core application, and frankly seems better situated in the WordPress section.

Owen, looking forward to 0.5.

Su, if I remember well I mentioned the cutting edge technology of Habari both among the pros and cons (first con actually).

Franky: Sure, but “cutting-edge tech” is quite a different statement from your direct suggestion that MT’s requirement won’t be fulfilled by many hosts, which given the release date of the version is either simply false, or you’re dealing with hosts who are a full seven releases behind current on the 5.8.x series. And that doesn’t take into account 5.9x and 5.10. I’ll leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions about those hosts.

MT’s Perl requirement is very conservative, and there was weeks of discussion on the developer list the last time it was raised to this four year old version. If you’ve actually encountered a host who can’t meet a requirement of 5.8.1, I’m sure Six Apart would be very interested in hearing about it.

Too bad Pivot is missing, especially since the new PivotX 2.0 version has just gone beta: http://www.pivotlog.net

Indeed….Dont forget Pivot!!!!

I just visited the Pivot mainpage. And to be honest, no feature list… the about link opens in a new window.

Sorry, but that really doesn’t invite me to give it a test run. Not to mention the tagline (on the about page) when addressing a main stream audience. (Hint: the tagline ‘.it’s php…’ one wouldn’t even pass the censor filter in many companies if it were not an image )

thanks for the information..

hi, you forgot to mention my favourite blog engine s9y s9y.org

Thanks for the info…Cheers!

Super information. Much appreciated!

siirt battaniyesi

I’m quite surprised that you also mentioned Chyrp. I know it since January and really fell in love with it.

Excellent summary: this is an extremely useful point of reference for folks shopping for a blog package!

I’d like to clarify one issue for your readers, though: Habari’s use of the Apache Software License does not in itself require meritocracy. We chose to follow the meritocracy model set forth by the Apache project itself, but that was a separate decision from choosing to use the Apache Software License.

A project using the GPL — or any other license! — could just as easily follow the meritocracy model.

Finally, while it’s true that discussion and deliberation within Habari might result in some long-running email threads, we think that the transparency and inclusiveness of those discussions are vitally important to our long-term success. Subject-matter experts can weigh in on their area(s) of focus and lend their experience to the conversation. It is our opinion that the final product is better for this: design and development aren’t left to the personal whim of a couple of people; it provides a very clear opening for folks to further participate in Habari; and we have a thoroughly documented history of how we arrived at decisions which interested parties can review later.

thank you

Pivot 2.0 seems to have been in beta forever.

Hey. I’m sorry for offtopic. Where you download this theme for site? I realy love it.
Amalia