As regular readers will have noticed I have been spammed the last couple of months through the blog comments. I had a hard time keeping the comments clear of spam messages in certain blog posts, but that was because my b2 blacklist module was wrongly configured (and I had reached a max limit). The situation has been remedied, much thanks to good old Mike and I am adding new IPs to the blacklists as they appear. Unfortunately, there are a lot of infected Windooze machines out there so you may experience a few spam messages once in a while, though not at the same rate as before.
An alternative solution could be to follow the example of one of my colleagues who was tired of getting spam into her mailbox. She put up a strong filtering rule and hasn’t received any spam since. Or any other e-mails for that matter. She called me up in my office just to praise the wonders of good old-fashioned fax technology…! I doubt it will last.
In other news I have been reading more about Drupal, the all-in-one Content Management System that I think will prove to be the one ring to rule them all. Drupal has a lot of followers and haters, much thanks to its intricate terminology which differs from the rest of the world’s. But I hope bringing a modern CMS to this site will make things easier for me, you and a lot harder for the spammers. And bring new possibilities for playing around with my Danish server. Now it’s time for lunch.
If you need something to compare to Drupal, you could check out Plone (plone.org). It’s been praised for being usability-focused.
Looks interesting, but I’ve merely just opened my Learning Python books and I never have time to develop anything.. But I’ll jot it down on the back of my mind. Thanks!
Have you tested Plone yourself? Seems like it’s a bit over-the-top for a personal website..
I quote:
The first thing to remember is that Plone is not an “I just want to host my weblog” or “I simply need a web forum” or “I need a wiki” kind of product. It is a powerful (but easy-to-use and extend) system which demands quite a lot from the server. It’s more like an operating system than an application, to use an analogy. Therefore, if you are just looking to solve a simple problem, there are probably less demanding and better suited applications out there.
Plone is heavier on RAM and CPU usage than your run-off-the-mill web system. It’s built to do a lot of different things, and should preferably be hosted on a dedicated server if possible.
http://plone.org/documentation/faq/server-recommendations
Ahh, no, haven’t had the chance to try it myself. I might be able to try it through work, but not at the moment.
Still, anything would be an upgrade from b2. Seriously, even WordPress.
This post was really interesting. Keep up the good work! Maybe you could check this website for more info.
;-)
BTW, Plone is a dog. If drupal has a steep learning curve, Plone is the fucking Alps. I also think you have to take an object oriented blood oath, and buy into their cult. That’s what plone is, not a dog; it’s a cult, a fucking cult.
Drupal is, I think, the perfect blend between ease of use and flexibility (read: difficult to develop for).
It’s nice to hear (read) some feedback about Plone. All I’ve hear from people is business-blurbs and shit like that.
Yes. Plone hit the market running with a (really good) screencast feat. on Digg & Slashdot, here: Better Web App Development (mov)
I was sad he didn’t include Drupal in that setting. AFAIK Drupal has been lacking in speed (& the fact it’s MySQL based acc. to Plone creator, but who cares) but this has been remedied with version 6 (or was it 4?) and above. I remember seeing Drupal creator, Dries Buytaert, presenting the enhancements.
Really, my mind is set on Drupal at this junction. Not only have I purchased Drupal reading material to familiarize myself with terminology, theming, security and possibilities; but I also really don’t need a SUPAH FAST or SUPAH SECURE machine. Besides you two guys, there’s my sister and my girlfriend reading this blog. (/understatement)
I just want to play around and have fun. And let’s not forget CONSOLIDATE. I’ve been testing Google Wave the last 2 days and I just gotta implement some of this on the site.
All my Drupal sites run on PostgreSQL. Most of the popular modules also support PostgreSQL. There are only a few (such as CiviCRM) that don’t support PostgreSQL.
Currently I host about 40 domains at http://altamente.com/ running drupal and wordpress on a server with 8 gigs of RAM and 4 cores. I serve over 1 million hits (individual items) or 300 hundreds thousand pageviews per month across all those domains. Nobody has a google page rank over 4 so they’re all small businesses, but aggregated, the traffic is moderate. The machine doesn’t even break a sweat running a 0.25 load average. 4.00 would be maxed out, so it’s running at 6.3% capacity.
I did some plone development a while back and it brought my dual opteron workstation to its knees during testing. You can optimize it an’ shit, but sheesh.
I’m also in love with Drupal’s modularity. If I want a simple page I can have it. If I want to add forum, gallery, insert-feature, I can add modules. If I want to setup a test Drupal in another dir I can do so too.
Just seems like the perfect platform to get to know over time.
Largest pop hit the last couple of weeks have been the unknown future of MySQL after being sold and re-sold. Maybe I should ditch it completely and go for Postgre.. BUT I’m not sure whether my host supports it yet. They are nice guys though, so it shouldn’t be much of a problem..