Typo is blog software written in Ruby, and available as a gem for Rails. It’s what is currently running this website. It’ has it’s pluses but over time it’s grown aggravating to me. I’ve decided to move on to another platform, but I’m not sure which at this point.

If by the time you are done reading this post you feel like Typo would be a good fit for you, you can download Typo and try it yourself. I’m by no means the expert in these matters, and what might not work for me might be right up your alley.

Why I picked Typo in the first place

When I was originally looking for a blog software to use I had these basic requirements:

• Not what everyone else was using(Wordpress, Blogger)
• Not written in PHP

I didn’t want to use what everyone else was using because in most things – I like to be different. The fact is that I am different from most people, and I tend to make that known.

I wanted to use a product that was not written in PHP because as an aspiring programmer, I’d rather be using a more cutting edge language like Ruby or Python. Not only is the code of Ruby/Python easier to write and the languages more interesting, but the jobs you get when you know them pay very much more than with PHP, whose programmers are a dime a dozen. I’m not saying that it’s not worth knowing – indeed PHP may be the most useful language to know due to it’s ubiquity. Also, I don’t want to offend any of the PHP programmers who may be reading – I’m envious of your skills(read: skillz).

Ok, so why Typo? Well looking back I didn’t look into things all that well. I ended up turning all the negatives into positives which isn’t a very smart thing to do. At some point, mostly for very shallow reasons I decided that Ruby was a little cooler than Python, so having eliminated all of the Python blog software(there aren’t many) I had a very very short list to choose from. When I tried the demo of Typo I was fairly impressed by the admin interface. Also even though there were very few themes available, I really liked the one I have applied here(scribbish).

What I don’t like about Typo

Lack of community

One thing about open-source software is that it really needs a large and active community. This is extremely evident when you start using projects like Drupal, Ubuntu, Eclipse, and so on. Typo is not like that at all. It’s basically just one person developing with a few other making commits. This really leads to nowhere fast.

If you read the first blog post I wrote on this website you’ll see the difficulty I encountered just getting up and running. This was due almost entirely because of Typo development that wasn’t keeping pace with the development of it’s fundaments – Ruby/Rails. Even after working around the issues I was having, an entire section of my admin area is broken. Looking in the svn repo for Typo I’ve found that there is an experimental branch for Ruby 1.8.7, but it’s pretty clear that it’s not going to be finished before Ruby increments again.

Lack of features

Obviously since this is an open-source project, this is intimately tied to the lack of community – but there are things that should have been available at the outset. For example: users(myself included) cannot log into the public side of the website. This makes it very annoying for commenters – having to retype their info each time, and not being able to edit their comments – but also for me If I want to edit anything I have to do it from the admin side.

Another feature missing that is somewhat related to front-side logging in is a feature that I first saw in WP – private posts. The ability to make a post that only permitted users can see is essential for the entire concept of weblog. The idea that everything I publish should be public is ludicrous.

Plug-ins. Again, because plug-ins are almost by definition community contributed I wouldn’t expect to see too many of them – but the number available is really pathetic. Less than 20 are available, and almost all are totally useless to 99.9% of people on the internet.

This brings me to my next point:

Why I’m dumb

I managed to turn every one of the things I’ve identified as negative about Typo into a positive.

Q: Don’t you want to use a product with a huge community? A: No, I want to be different!

Q: Don’t you want to have thousands of plug-ins available? A: I’ll just write whatever I need!

Q: Don’t you want blogging to be easy? A: …

So yeah, now I realize that if you want to actually, say, write blogs then you have to have the time to do that. I want to learn Ruby – of course – but I want to write quick blogs about my accomplishments too. Starting a blog as a learning project means you have neither a blog or a project – just a bunch of stagnation. In my case I opted to write blog after blog and never have the features I wanted, feeling pissed off all the while. not good.

So, what to use now?

Honestly I’m leaning towards WordPress. It’s the obvious choice for obvious reasons, but until I have a couple hours to look again at all of the(free, open-source) options – I can’t make a final decision.

I’d still like to look at Ruby/Python blog softwares, and this time not because I want a pet project. I’ll look at performance issues – I know that Ruby, but especially Python will outperform PHP, but after caching is taken into account the difference may be negligible.

I don’t think WordPress is inherently insecure – as some assert it is due to it’s open-source nature(unlike windoze, which is SO secure!), but it might be vulnerable due to it’s high usage and therefore high rate of attack(just like windoze!). But that’s all anecdotal – I don’t know security in general much less the minute details of the WP code.

Mephisto is another Ruby blog, but it looks like it suffers from the same problems as does Typo. I’d love to do either one of these if I could get paid to work on them.

Anyway…I’ll just keep looking around for now. Post a comment if you want to make a suggestion! (Sorry it won’t remember your user info and I won’t be notified of new comments)