I’ve been playing around with MovableType to test it out for a potential weblogs@ucalgary rollout. It’s really quite nice. I’ve used MT 2.x before (and it’s still running on our main commons.ucalgary.ca webserver), but 3.15 is a nice and polished package. I can’t seem to get it to recognize my NetPBM installation to generate image thumbnails, but that’s not critical. I also can’t seem to get LDAP authentication working, and that’s a bit more critical. I’ll try to tinker with that when I get time.
I’ve also set up an extremely simple page (actually, it’s a blog with no content of its own) that lists the last 20 posts on all blogs in the system. Works well, and I’ve got a crontask set to update it every 15 minutes so it should scale up nicely with a balance between up-to-the-minute posts and not hammering the system. It also provides an RSS feed for the whole system, which is pretty cool.
These are things that Drupal does as well, but in a rather more clunky manner, with more complexity on the screen. MT hides all complexity behind the Admin interface, so readers aren’t exposed to any of it (which is a Good Thing).
Personally, I prefer WordPress, and will continue to use it to power this weblog. But it has issues with scalability, making it less desirable for a large-scale multi-user multi-blog project on a campus scale.
It’s interesting that this non-project has gone from an idea tossed around between Paul and myself on the flight back from Northern Voice, to something attracting the attention of Information Resources, and of Information Technologies (who apparently are hesitant to come near this puppy for fear of being left to support it).
UPDATE: reworded some text to sound less confrontational.
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I set up the MU version of WordPress last week and was disappointed to say the least. I love WP for my own uses, but the MU version is way too new to use in an enterprise fashion. I’d like to look at MoveableType and will be watching your activities as closely as I can (from State College, PA) … I am even more perked by your last couple of sentences … I am assuming these are central support units at your University? I am seeing the same types of reactions here at PSU — the central U technology office is a little put off by the idea of a College doing its own thing. They have started a blog project, but in typical PSU style they are rolling their own. From what I’ve seen its decent, but it will be difficult to use from a user point of view.
Tools like WordPress are so mature when it comes to ease of use … where they breakdown is with integration with University systems — authentication, security, etc. I know that’s why we are looking to build it. I’ll keep you posted.
I’m still a bit cloudy on the role of IR (and I’ve been on campus since 1987
), but I believe it’s the Library folks. IT is the compsi/systems admin folks.
So, the Library folks are interested, and IT is scared of supporting it. What else is new?
And the problem with WPMU isn’t the integration with LDAP etc… That’s possible to bake in. The real issue is the need to replicate a fresh set of tables for each blog. Which means a highly used service may have a couple thousand tables. An upgrade to WP may require updating each of them. That scares the crap out of me.
Ideally, there would be a mix of the ease of use of WordPress, with the proper back-end design of MT for this kind of use… BUT, MT 3 is much closer to WordPress now, IMHO. If I can figure out the LDAP issue, it makes it pretty much a no-brainer. I’d just have to find/make some cash to pay the license fee.
Roll-your-own projects can work -as it did at Warwick – but on campus here, weblogs weren’t even on the radar until we started playing semi-publicly with them in a University context. I’m planning a workshop at an upcoming Faculty Technology Days event about weblogs, and am hoping to share whatever solution we’ve come up with by then…
Alrighty, time for me to ask some daft questions re: LDAP :O)
All my knowledge about LDAP has appeared in the last week contextually and from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LDAP
I’m assuming that the uni dbase you have with all the users in it ’supports’ LDAP in that you are able to use the protocol to access the dbase of users and hence automate the creation of a blog for each user. Is that correct?
So assuming that I’m right is this true of the vast majority of dbases? How much drama is it to get something like that (automation wise) happening? Do you reckon you’re going to encounter any real scripting problems?
Fascinating and v. applicable stuff!
Cheers, James
The IT dept. keeps a database of People (students, faculty, staff), with info like their username, password, phone number, etc… The plan would be to tell MT to authenticate users against _that_ database, rather than having to create and maintain a parallel list of users directly in the MT database. That would get unmanageable if the project takes off, as there are in the ballpark of 30,000 people in the system.
LDAP provides an interface for applications (like MT) to query (get info about user “dlnorman”) or authenticate (“someone says their username is ‘dlnorman’ and their password is ’secretpassword’ – is that correct?”) without having to touch the database directly.
It’s not a matter of cloning the IT database into MT, but in teaching MT to use external authentication, and then trust that the user is valid (and create a weblog automatically if needed, etc…)
There may be some hiccoughs with integrating LDAP into MT. There is a plugin/hack to get it working, but I didn’t have any luck with MT 3.15 (it’s an older plugin, so may be for MT 2.x only). Case Western Reserve University has a bunch of custom additions they made to MT to make their solution properly use LDAP authentication, so it is definitely possible. It would be nice if Six Apart rolled it in so we don’t all have to reinvent the same wheel, though…
Actually, I wonder if I’m over exaggerating the value of LDAP, at least in the short- to medium-term. We’re not going to start with 30,000 users. We’ll be lucky if he have 50, or even 100. That number is totally manageable without LDAP. Maybe we can run a full pilot using stock vanilla MT, and worry about LDAP down the road?
I was wondering that, I mean Weblogs@Harvard was entirely ’sign up’ and you get your blog, so that’d be a lot easier.
BUT where I think your project has real potential is in the automatic generation of blogs for each student / faculty… kindof like the automatic creation of email accounts, a uni OS of sorts.
So while I reckon you could easily (& far more simply) roll with a ’subscribe’ model I think you’re missing out on a potentially huge leap into the application and use of weblogs… but also an enormous project… and it might not be the best time to undertake that with blogs?
Thanks for the LDAP rundown, cogs grinding forward in my head.
Cheers, james
Hi D’Arcy, Information Resources at the U of C consists of the Library, the Image Centre, the Nickle Arts Museum, University Archives, and University Press. I didn’t think IT was *scorning* the idea of weblogs.ucalgary.ca, they just obviously don’t have anyone who’s using blogs yet – tough to say “sure!” to something you don’t “get” yet
True. I probably overstated the “scorn” part. IT is being understandably cautious about this. I’ve got some work to do in showing benefits, and the limited risks, etc…