Drupal is an excellent content management system or focussed community management application that doesn’t really cut the mustard when it comes to providing multiple blogs. Technically perfect but is limited by a focus on the group rather than the individual. Worth a look as this might be what you’re after. Read the complete review.

Elgg is perhaps the most promising open source social networking application out there. Founded on a blogging principle and incorporating many more community and networking tools, it’s well worth a look and will be even more so by the time it hits 1.0. Read the complete review.

Manila has been ahead of the crowd for a long long time now. Problem is that it hasn’t moved much itself in that time and while the concept is brilliant, the execution is less so. Everyone should experience it, am not sure how much you’ll gain through using it though. Read the complete review.

Movable Type has a well deserved reputation as one of the best blogging tools available. Add to this corporate support and you’ll probably be happy you went down this route. However, with less momentum than it’s competitors, significant costs in starting up and a famously tricky technical composition it might pay off to take the small risk on an open source solution. Read the complete review.

WordPress Multi User (WPMU) is beginning to establish itself as the standard in multi user blogging. While many projects might prefer a more stable or community based solution for pure blogging with strong open source credentials and an exciting future ahead this may be the answer you’re looking for. Read the complete Review.

LifeType (formally pLog) is a clear, simple and effective open source multi user blogging tool. With an established community and stable build this should be in consideration whatever application of blogs you are considering. Read the complete review.

So why don’t ya go and make a bunch of kiwis very very happy by proposing a paper, poster, praxis or workshop… beautiful Wellington combined with a quick scoot round the island sounds like a good way to spend the middle of March to me!!!

Following on from the review of different multi user blogging tools I’m keen for this section to examine the ways in which different multi-user blogging platforms work. The plan is that this will provoke discussion and inform people who are giving blogs through multi user tools and it’s broken down into several different parts.

First up it’s going to consider exactly why you might want become a ‘blog provider’ and the implications that this has on what you do and how you do it. For example, how the commercial interests of Xanga differ from March of Dimes’ Share and how this impacts on what they provide and where they’re going.

Then, I’m going to run over the ways in which these blogging platforms work, from invite only sites like WordPress.com to the classic quick and easy ones like Blogger to the social networking of LiveJournal. This part is going to try to give a good overview of how and why these blogging providers do what they do and how it might affect you as a blog provider yourself.

Finally, to sum this up I’m going to examine the ways in which these blogging sites go about achieving their goals. I’m going to look at effective advertising, community creation, public service, educational uses and more to put forward some suggestions as to how you might learn from what these companies and individuals are doing.

With any luck after I’ve finished this section you’ll be well on your way to selecting a tool and getting down to business with a project, at least that’s the plan

Which means that in this month so far I have received a staggering 7, yes 7, referrals for ‘professional blog’, 3 for ‘blog consulting’ and a square 0 (zero) for ‘blog consultant’! Perhaps my forecast for business through search results might be a little, um, off whack ;D

Put it this way, existing pre-web and to a large degree pre-blog our communities were generally made up of people geographically close to us. Yes, there have always been conferences and yes there have, in an academic sense at least, always been journals and alike but essentially our day to day communities were the people we work and socialise with. In fact, the development of listservs, newsgroups and alike didn’t necessarily change this to any great degree, we were still essentially part of a particular group which we had joined and our communities were people in that group.

With blogs though things are a lot different, now we don’t need to join a group to have a voice, we don’t need to necessarily have to conform to particular group social norms and we don’t need to engage with a fixed community… we can subscribe, unsubscribe, comment and place ourselves wherever we so choose, and not even worry too much about acceptance!

However, while we’re doing this we’re essentially selecting to read and interact with people that we feel we can either learn something from, get along with or whom we are interested in. It’s become a very very easy process and I’m wondering what the negative impacts of that might be on the diversity and significance of what we draw from a traditional community.

In a traditional community there will, odds are, be a fair number of people who disagree with us. There will also, and perhaps more significantly, be a broad range of expertise, interests and backgrounds that we might not necessarily come up against if we get to choose and are not forced to interact with these ‘other’ people (that’s difficult you see). Strangely, blogs might be doing more than just creating an echo chamber and in fact be making us into more blinkered, less tolerant and more ‘local’ communities.

Or, is it an improvement… a more efficient rationalised community model for an increasingly rationalistic age?

Alright, hands up first off because while WPMU is the last multi-blogging tool I’m reviewing, it was also the first one on the list as it’s the tool that I use for projects such as edublogs and prblogs. Still, this doesn’t make it necessarily the *best* multi blogging solution out there… just the one that happened to cross my radar when I was (a.) using WordPress and which (b.) had a simple ‘create your blog’ page.

In terms of the journey WPMU has been down, it’s been a long and interesting one. Starting off as a hack of b2 (now known as b2evolution) called b2++ by Donncha O’Caoimh it’s gone through a range of different forms to find it in it’s current state where it provides the base for wordpress.com and many more WPMU-based sites (check out the list down the sidebar).

Essentially WPMU provides each user with a version of WordPress with all it’s world-leading functionality. This includes simple uploading of images and image management, detailed user management (although ‘add user’ – outside of existing users on that system – has been deliberately turned off), uses of ‘pages’ as well as ‘posts’, multiple effective plugins and a range of possible themes. As a blogging engine it’s unsurpassed. If you’re an education professional then get yourself an edublogs.org site, if not try one of the ones listed through the link above (I’m a particular fan of BeBlogging.com and wugga.com)

However, there are drawbacks. The software itself has still to be given an ‘alpha’ release, yet alone a ‘beta’ and if you’re uncomfortable with finding out things for yourself or using the excellent forums then you could struggle without a good grasp of php (I don’t have a good grasp, I know you’ll struggle!). Perhaps of more concern though is the lack of ‘independence’ that the blogs have in terms of templates and plugins. For example, it is currently impossible (beyond designing and having uploaded your own individual template) to edit a template to your choosing and if you want a particular plugin, then you’ve just got to persuade the admin to make it available site-wide.

Indeed, it could be argued, that if WordPress can live up to it’s promise as being *the* excellent independent blogging tool, then as long as WPMU only allows a limited amount of independence to each blogger… this opens up the field for whoever effectively can. As long as blogs are going to be the jumping off point for digital identity, independence of design is going to be critical beyond simply choosing one of 50, 100 or 500 themes. Donncha knew this in developing earlier versions of WPMU (which used smarty templates) but whether this kind of flexibility will be afforded to the current system is unclear as yet.

Having said all of this though, for sheer functionality, potential and application, at this moment it feels a bit like WPMU has the world before it. The potential for applications of tools like global categories, community management features and API use are huge. But time will tell how many steps it takes.

Manila and Userland software, driven by Dave Winer, were the pioneers of blogging, RSS and social software back in the day… my first blog was powered by Radio Userland and, in some significant ways, the design functionality and application of these tools is amazingly insightful.

A simple feature list of the software is enough to blow you away, not only does it give you the capacity to create multiple blogs but you also have attached a genuine content / web management system, totally flexible templating and fully functional blog tools. Add to this built in individual aggregators (something unique, still, to Manila and which could crack the market for the OS blog application that comes up with an effective use of this).

But but but but but there’s also something very very wrong. The user interface is painful, the development seems to have stalled in the last three years to almost nothing and the system seems increasingly bulky, buggy and incompatible with what we now expect from our web publishing applications. In short, it was a great idea… it’s still a great idea… but it was an average implementation which is now pretty lousy.

I have absolutely no doubt that had development really kicked on with this system it would be a world beater, but at over $1000 a pop per/annum for a non-educational licence with such attractive competition I’d now be slow to recommend it to anyone who doesn’t have a great degree of patience, fairly average expectations and is reluctant to go with an open source solution.

Shame

“Federal Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull has called for the Government to give every Australian their own email address for life.”

Sometimes being an Aussie can be a tad frustrating…

I mean, I think it was a year and a half ago that the NSW govt splashed out $84 million on providing every frickin school with email.

This really has to stop.

For the same amount of money the government could provide every single Australian with their own fully featured Content Management System / Blog.

We have the tools and the hardware costs would be the same (or a lot less).

Imagine it, every resident could have their own area, their own digital space and voice… they could be geospatially aggregated in community contexts… multiple voices, platforms and audiences.

Bloody hell, using the global categories function in WPMU you could even have communities of interest in a city, let alone a neighbourhood. Whack in the tagging that Bud is also incorporating alongside WPMU and your folksonomy is your community.

What a brilliant public service!

Please somebody, anybody, hire me to make this happen!

:

“Why pay at all when you can get everything that MovableType offers free of charge from pLog? Both applications have virtually the same basic features and personally, I think pLog is a lot easier to customize. pLog is ideal for anyone wanting to easily host a blogging community (with its summary.php page), and has added functionality for extras like podcasting built into the core.”

And that sums it up pretty well, it’s a straightforward, simple and effective system that certainly impresses. However, straightforward and simple really does mean that… and while for some people this might be a huge benefit, the comparatively small amount of development and community based around the tool means that there is by no means a plethora of plugins (read that as ‘no plugins’). You won’t be getting your hands on a WSYWIG editor of any description and while it has plenty of excellent templates I’m not sure if they’re particularly flexible in terms of providing multiple forms of representation through for different pages. Nonetheless it is being used very successfully by a number of organisations including Blogs @ Rice and the extremely successful (and place where I tested it out at ) Bloc de BalearWeb. Given this, the stable 1.01 release, and the ease of installation of the software for multiple blog use this is definitely one to have a run with at no cost to yourselves!

But what he, and a lot of the commentators don’t seem to get, or at least latch onto, is that we’re not looking at the rise of consumer blogs, extrovert blogs or even a demise in geek bloggers… what’s catching on is a rise in genuine problogging… professionals who blog.

It started earlier in IT (obviously) and has been picked up and ran with by education (another regular early adopter / innovator) but what’s starting to happen is that as blogging becomes more accessible, the tools become far simpler to use and the concepts become more broadly understood (nobody understands blogging… everyone understands podcastng!) is that professional communities are starting to move from listservs and email groups over to the blogging world.

Take edublogs… not a tool for educators to use with students but a blogging provider for people involved in education… 1 month old today and already with 837 blogs!

And in that light I’d like to introduce PRblogs.org a collaborative project led by Robert French and supported by Blogsavvy:

It’s a natural development, makes sense… 1st Gen bloggers have been the geeks, the teenagers and the ‘out there’ but 2nd Gen will be the professionals, watch this space!