I’ve been playing with my computer setups the last few weeks. I wanted to convert my Linux server back to a Windows 2008 box so that it was similar to my other machines.
So, I tried out some Windows based blog or CMS packages. I tried playing with BlogEngine.Net, DotNetNuke, and one other free system. I got BlogEngine.Net running in non-SQL mode but found it hard to configure. I think they actually wanted me to edit the source to change the themes.
DotNetNuke seems to be very commercially biased. The CMS is free, but all the good looking modules seem to be commercial. I had trouble getting it even running though. I followed the instructions step by step and just ended up with an ASP.NET error message. Googling didn’t help.
So, I setup a SharePoint services site. I’ve played with them before and I know it has the three things I really like in a web site. Files, blogs, and a wiki for free format documentation. I haven’t seen any open source tools that have all those. Big downside is that it depends on Windows authentication, and it looks ugly as hell. Not good for public internet use for a personal site.
So, I decided to look at my Linux based solutions again. I setup a few Linux servers in VMware using CentOS, Ubuntu, and Gentoo. I ended up going with the Gentoo installation. It’s been so long since I worked with it though, it was tricky trying to get it working the way I wanted it.
My choices for running the web sites was Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress. I had been using WordPress for quite a while when the host machine was running on Linux. It’s very nice for a blog site, but doing other things is trickier.
I was planning to go with Drupal for this site, my Dennis-It.org site, and my other special project. But I really wasn’t finding the output to be very nice. I looked at about 30 different themes and did find the Wabi one which I liked. Though, just the way it displayed output bugged me.
So, I’ve decided to go with WordPress for my personal site, and Drupal for my open source site. I figure it will be more of a static page site which will be okay in Drupal. I don’t know if I’ll add a separate blog for it, or just make my posts here.
So, you may be asking why I decided on Gentoo instead of CentOS or Ubuntu server. Mainly I just found the bigger distributions annoying in that they decided which versions of applications that I’m expected to run. And neither had MySQL 5.1. Installing the MySQL rpm’s in CentOS caused other dependency issues.
I personally like a distribution that provides the bare minimum OS requirements, and then let me pick the versions of the applications I want to run. OS’s that let you do this easily are Windows, FreeBSD, and Gentoo. IF you don’t mind compiling your own installs 🙂
In my case, I wanted Apache 2.0, MySQL 5.1, and PHP 5.3.0. I need the older Apache so that i can do pass through NTLM authentication for SharePoint sites. And I want the newer MySQL and PHP so I can do better apps.
I also installed my Subversion repository on the same host since I can’t have the web site and svn URL on two different computers. I like it this way though anyway.
Now, the fun part. I have to transfer all my older blog content back into this new WordPress install. I searched everywhere for my export file from the previous one but can’t find it. I have copies in a word doc though so it’s just a matter of copying.
So, I may have a whole lot of blog entries in the next few days. Sorry if it takes you a long time to catch up.