Takumi's Blog

There’s some open-source projects I always keep my eye on, or at least try to. Now, you have to remember, open-source doesn’t mean freeware. Those are two very different things. Open-source means what it says, you can view the source for the project, and edit it as you want. However, depending on the project, the developers have their own licensing and terms of use. Some may say you can edit it, but you can’t redistribute it, others may say you can edit it and redistribute it, etc.

Here’s my main ones that I keep my eye on:

• Joomla!
• MyBB
• Vanilla
• WordPress
• Drupal

Joomla and Drupal are both CMS systems, WordPress is blogging software, and Vanilla and MyBB are both forum software. I think all of these have have great potential.

Vanilla is the very backbone of a forum software, Mark the developer started it in hopes of creating a fast, lean, and extensible forum system. I used to keep up with the development a lot last year, but haven’t been able to lately.

MyBB is a lot like vBulletin, but I personally like the open development and free usage better. Though, it still could see a lot of performance improvements, and some extensions (like a Gallery, and a CMS add-on).

Joomla! I have mixed feelings for. I LOVE the administrator’s end. Very user friendly, easy to use, and looks great. But for the end user, I found it was a little hard to understand the URL structure, and the way the CSS is setup is really hard to create your own styles. (Not all the modules use the main stylesheets for layout, they have their own that is hard to change).

Drupal… It’s a great piece of software, but more for a developer who likes to get down into things. I don’t find it that easy to setup, and customize. But it does have great extensions.

WordPress… well, I think I’ve said this before, but it’s the best blogging software available for download. (Blogger is good for a hosted service, and software like iWeb I think are in a different category). One feature I really want for WordPress is a bridge system so users can bridge the software with other software (ie. WP + Joomla! + Vanilla)

I'm not finished with the design of my blog quite yet, please hold on while I fix the comments, archives, and search templates.