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The Blogging Software Dilemma

This site is beginning to grow and grow, and forward compatibility has lately been in my mind more. Several days ago this site passed twenty thousand unique visitors, and more than seventy thousand hits, since late August. I recently converted everything (except the photolog) to XHTML 1.1, which was nice, but it’s not the markup I’m worried about. My logging software hasn’t been updated for months, and the main developer has disappeared, and I can only hope that he’s okay.

What to do? Well, Textpattern looks like everything I could ever want, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to be licensed under something politically I could agree with. Fortunately, b2/cafelog is GPL, which means that I could use the existing codebase to create a fork, integrating all the cool stuff that Michel would be working on right now if only he was around. The work would never be lost, as if I fell of the face of the planet a year from now, whatever code I made would be free to the world, and if someone else wanted to pick it up they could. I’ve decided that this the course of action I’d like to go in, now all I need is a name. What should it do? Well, it would be nice to have the flexibility of MovableType, the parsing of TextPattern, the hackability of b2, and the ease of setup of Blogger. Someday, right?

Update, 2003-12-26: This became WordPress.

117 replies on “The Blogging Software Dilemma”

Matt,
If you’re serious about forking b2 I would be interested in contributing. I’m sure there are one or two others in the community who would be too. Perhaps a post to the B2 forum, suggesting a fork would be a good starting point.

[…] Talk about inspiration, I’m asking you. Is there anybody out there who’s creating something really from the scratch without any inspiration by others? In the term of blog engine. Do you know that, even the WordPress was inspired by the flexibility of MovableType, the parsing of TextPattern, the hackability of b2, and the ease of setup of Blogger. The Movable Type itself probably was inspired by the classic blogging tool called Dollarshot, etc. and etc. […]

[…] WordPress is celebrating its third birthday today, as posted by Mike Little on his blog. This post from one of the founders – Matt Mullenweg – shows how he first got the inkling to create such a platform. The future looks bright for WP as more and more people make the change. The development team behind the creation appear to work tirelessly to forever improve and update the software, and I am pleased to have found and created my weblog via it. […]

[…] Es wird berichtet, dass dieser Tage WordPress seinen dritten Geburtstag feiert. Dieser Artikel wird als der Beginn betrachtet. Wie auch immer, drei Jahre programmieren fleißige Hände für alle WordPresser und WordPresserinnen Plugins. All die kleinen und großen Helferlein, die das tägliche Blogger Leben so angenehm machen. In den Supportforen werden Hilfesuchende gut beraten und wer weiß wohin die Reise der Software noch geht. Happy Birthday WordPress und Danke an all die Programmierer . 🙂 […]

[…] From Photo Matt: Fortunately, b2/cafelog is GPL, which means that I could use the existing codebase to create a fork, integrating all the cool stuff that Michel would be working on right now if only he was around. The work would never be lost, as if I fell of the face of the planet a year from now, whatever code I made would be free to the world, and if someone else wanted to pick it up they could. I’ve decided that this the course of action I’d like to go in, now all I need is a name. […]

[…] Photo Matt » The Blogging Software Dilemma The thoughts behind birth of WP.Well, it would be nice to have the flexibility of MovableType, the parsing of TextPattern, the hackability of b2, and the ease of setup of Blogger. Someday, right? (tags: WordPress) […]

[…] Thanks to the wonders of permalinks you can actually read the comment where WordPress was born, from a swell fellow named Mike Little. We started by integrating his links code and some of my texturize/autop stuff and then worked a lot of creating the options system (moving stuff out of config files) and simplifying the install. Add in a new default template, XHTML compliance, and remove all color from the admin interface and you have WordPress 0.70, which was used by approximately 5 people including myself and my cat. […]

[…] The day WordPress was born 30. Oktober 2006 – 20:32 Uhr  Es ist wohl der 24.01.2003. Fortunately, b2/cafelog is GPL, which means that I could use the existing codebase to create a fork, integrating all the cool stuff that Michel would be working on right now if only he was around. The work would never be lost, as if I fell of the face of the planet a year from now, whatever code I made would be free to the world, and if someone else wanted to pick it up they could. I’ve decided that this the course of action I’d like to go in, now all I need is a name. What should it do? Well, it would be nice to have the flexibility of MovableType, the parsing of TextPattern, the hackability of b2, and the ease of setup of Blogger. Someday, right? […]

[…] El 24 de Enero del 2003 Matt anunciaba que iba a crear un fork del entonces b2/cafelog ya que la licencia de Textpattern no le daba la libertad que el quería. Y avisaba que cualquier modificación que hiciera iba a estar libre para que cualquier pudiera utilizarla o mejorarla. Decía que sería bueno conseguir la flexibilidad de MovableType, el parsing de TextPattern, la modificación de b2, y la facilidad de configuración de Blogger; preguntándose si algún día lo conseguiría. Obviamente, cinco años después, podemos decirlo con total seguridad. WordPress es el sistema de gestión de blogs más usado del mundo, ha superado con creces a los originarios TextPattern y MovableType. Y encima consiguiendo una inversión cercana a los 30 millones de dólares para seguir mejorando sus productos WordPress, bbPress, Akismet, etc. ¿Quién iba a decir hace 5 años a Matt que liberando el código, dando a tus competidores toda tu información, conseguiría lo que ha conseguido hasta ahora? […]

[…] WordPress bestaat vandaag precies vijf jaar. WP is de software waar de astroblogs onder draait en waar ik erg tevreden over ben1. Toevallig werd vandaag ook de Technorati top-100 gepubliceerd, de 100 meest bezochtte weblogs en daarvan blijkt maar liefst 34% te draaien onder WP. Eén-na meest gebruikt CMS2 is Movable Type, met een gebruik van 16%. Matt, bedenker van WP, gefeliciteerd met de verjaardag! Hij heeft overigens nog een andere reden om een feestje te vieren, want gisteren bleek dat zijn computerbedrijf Auttomatic voor $29.5 miljoen aan investeerders heeft weten aan te boren. Bron: CMSwire en Zed1.com. […]

[…] the archives on his website, ma.tt, from 5 years ago to the day that expresses his thoughts towards creating this wonderful thing called WordPress. That someday eventually turned into millions of blogs, thousands of design jobs, and the ability […]

[…] happy to discover that back in 2003, you can actually find a blog post by Matt on his blog titled The Blogging Software Dilemma, where he writes about the idea of the perfect blogging software. Here is a bit of his post: What […]

It’s pretty amazing to read this post and realize that it’s only been 4 years… Did I say only? That’s amazing! It feels like I’ve ALWAYS been running WordPress!

Thanks Matt, WordPress is cool enough as it is but i think you can still make it better by doing it the Microsoft way like copying everything from Movable Type, Text Patten and the whole lot

Then we can have the best of everything plus this has worked for Microsoft they are still on top now and probably will be

[…] Kalau kita berkunjung ke situs Wikipedia, dan sebenarnya ini sudah pengetahuan umum di penggiat WordPress, jelas informasi di atas salah. Matt tidak menciptakan software blog b2. B2 dibuat oleh programer bernama Michel Valdrighi. Matt kemudian membuat fork (istilah untuk membuat cabang program baru dari sebuah program lama) dari b2 yang kemudian dia beri nama WordPress (lihat posting Matt sendiri mengenai awal ketika ia melakukan fork atas b2). […]

“Well, it would be nice to have the flexibility of MovableType, the parsing of TextPattern, the hackability of b2, and the ease of setup of Blogger. Someday, right?”

What happened to ‘the parsing of TextPattern’? I have been dreaming of using WordPress with Textile or some kind of wikitext.

[…] thing, and what a long way we’ve come. From a discussion between myself and Mike Little about forking our favorite blogging software, to powering 18% of the web. It’s been a crazy, exciting, journey, and one that won’t […]

[…] thing, and what a long way we’ve come. From a discussion between myself and Mike Little about forking our favorite blogging software, to powering 18% of the web. It’s been a crazy, exciting, journey, and one that won’t stop any […]

[…] 僕たちがこのプロジェクトをスタートして、10年が経ちました。ずいぶん遠くまできたものです。僕とマイク・リトルが気に入っていたブログソフトウェアをフォークすることを話し合った時から、Web 全体の18%をカバーするようになるまで、クレージーでエキサイティングな道のりでした。そしてこの旅は、まだ終わりません。 […]