I’m trying to decide what blogging platform to use for a small- to medium-sized project. This won’t be students blogging, but staff members who I will be encouraging to blog about what’s going on in the school district. (I was quite inspired by the blogging panel at NSBA that featured a superintendent and a couple school board members blogging. We recorded a conversation afterwards that became Ed Tech Coast to Coast #8.)
I use and love WordPress, but it just doesn’t cut it when you’ve got more than a handful of users blogging. You have to maintain a separate instance of WordPress for each blog and it just doesn’t scale. Other contenders include: MovableType, Drupal, ELGG, and Blojsom (built into OS X server). As expected, each has its strengths and weaknesses.
- MovableType
- Scalable, robust, LDAP support appears to be an add-on, not free
- Drupal
- Scalable, robust, LDAP support, does way more than blogging which may be overly complicated for the task at hand, free
- ELGG
- Not a lot of experience with this, definitely has LDAP support, tied in with a larger learning environment which isn’t exactly what I’m looking for, free
- Blojsom
- Needs an OS X server unless you’re running it on its own, ties into Open Directory, scalable, user-friendly, limited features in the OS X bundled version.
It seems at this point that MovableType and Drupal have the edge. It’s coming down to ease-of-use and LDAP authentication support. Unfortunately, those considerations point in different directions at this point. I’d gladly entertain reader suggestions. 
I think any of these would work for the project that you have described. The relevant question, in my mind, would be which one will work when the project scales up in size or in scope. I don’t have a lot of experience with Elgg, but I’m trying to find a project where I can give it a try. Drupal would work nicely if you needed to scale up in size or add more functionality to the group (although I would hasten to add that you should always keep a test install to play around with adding features – painful experience is a powerful teacher). You could take a look at what has been done on http://weblogs.ucalgary.ca/ as an example.
Be sure to check out WordPress MU (multi user):
http://mu.wordpress.org/
Multiple blogs with one installation.
Ryan, I should have mentioned that one. Unfortunately WP MU only allows one blog per user. That may be a problem in my situation.
A nice comparison chart can be found here http://www.ojr.org/ojr/images/blog_software_comparison.cfm
For our school website we use Blogger for now. http://www.apsva.us/schools/barrett
You might want to checkout Expression Engine. Looking at the chart, it appears to be the one that would meet our needs as we look to advancing.
Blojsom 3.0, the first milestone, is available. http://www.blojsom.com/blog/david/blojsom/2006/04/24/blojsom-3-0-M1-available.html
Blojsom does have an LDAP authorization provider that can be used to tie into your existing directory for authorization. The administrative experience in 3.0 is better than that of 2.x and it’s still improving. If I can answer any other questions or provide some assistance, let me know.
We’re going to be investigating b2evolution — http://www.b2evolution.net — for use at SLA. Miguel suggested that it might do everything we want it to do — and I suspect everything you want it to do too.
Chris, I should have included podcasting support in my list of requirements. It seems that b2evolution doesn’t have it. I’m afraid that takes it out of the running. (Maybe I missed it somewhere?)
I would also suggest WordPress MU. Have not looked into multiple blogs by a single user, but you could always set them up with a different login for the 2nd blog.
According to the WordPress web site they will be adding multiple blogs in future versions of WordPress, but that doesn’t help you now.
We have also streamlined the creation of multiple blogs with WordPress by duplicating directories and scripting changdes to the mySQL database. Would be willing to share the steps and scripts.
Either Drupal or Elgg could get this job done nicely — they both have LDAP authentication, and they are both set up to manage multiple bloggers in one install.
RE Drupal’s complexity, Drupal can be made pretty simple if you configure it well. While it has a lot of functionality, you don’t need to expose all the functionality to the end users.
With podcasting in the mix, however, Elgg merits another look. Elgg comes podcast-enabled out of the box, whereas Drupal’s podcasting capabilities are definitely in need of more development.
RE Elgg being “tied in with a larger learning environment” — Elgg can be configured so that all content on a site is private by default — individual users can override the default settings to choose to share their content with a wider audience, but Elgg could be a great solution for an blog enabled, podcast enabled, browser based file sharing, intranet on steroids
Basically, Elgg can be made as public or as private as you’d like, and individual users have pretty granular control over who accesses their content.
While either Drupal or Elgg could be a good fit, Elgg is definitely worth checking out — it gives some nice functionality out of the box, and creates a clean, user centered work environment.
I was tasked to create a collaborative environment for a community of interest within my company. Since we are corporate training professionals, ELGG was my choice based on the wider community of educators. Many (if all) of our members were not initally familiar with blogging, so introducing them to other education professionals who were using this “new” technology was important. The file sharing feature and privacy controls are most used. The blogging aspect is unfortuately under-utilized, people preferring to browse rather than contribute. Best of luck with your project, I’d be curious to read about your future successes with it.