After a few month rest period, it feels like the “multiuser weblog software” arena is heating up again. Drupal keeps chugging along. ELGG is looking really sweet, and now WordPress Multiuser (WPMU) is firing back into the competition.
Might be time to take a step back and re-evaluate multiuser software platform before weblogs.ucalgary.ca hits the big time. It’s currently running as what might be described as a “limited test pool”, with several users dipping their toes, but no hardcore users piping up.
The majority of the feedback I’ve received from Actual Users™ about the Drupal software is that it is too complicated, and it doesn’t feel like it’s “theirs”. They don’t feel comfortable using it – even when stripped waaay down, there’s just so many dials and buttons and levers that newbies get intimidated. It just feels like a geek tool.
ELGG feels like a social weblog collaborative, and WPMU feels like a really good and easy to use personal blog system that can be more if it wants to.
If a user’s first reaction to the software is something like “GAH!” they are less likely to use it. If they’re less likely to use it, it becomes less valuable, eventually worthless to the community it’s trying to serve.
I think, in the long run, a less-than-perfect tool that facilitates contribution by users at the expense of lacking abstracted CMS features may be more powerful (more valuable to the community) than an überCMS that scares a portion of potential users away. Wow. That was one killer run-on sentence…
Over the next several weeks, I’m going to try to take/make the time to do a more thoughtful comparison of these three candidate platforms, hoping to figure out what the real requirements are (like, what will a user do, and what do they need/want), rather than worrying primarily about IT-related things (like LDAP (although that is nice) ).
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D’Arcy Norman Dot Net » Blog Archive » Multiuser weblog software is heating up again…
D’Arcy Norman looks at the multi-blog universe again. He’s examining a few systems and I like his simple litmus test:
If a user’s first reaction to the software is something like “GAH!” they are less likely to use it.
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I think it’s time people got over MT
Can’t wait to hear your thoughts D’Arcy… ‘easue of use’ is something that seems to have improved dramatically with WP1.6 wouldn’t ya say… but it could still get easier and you’re right… Elgg is making a strong play!
D’Arcy, I have to agree – the limited feedback I’ve heard mostly boils down to “???!”. Thinking back to the session you did at Faculty Technology Days, I think there were as many questions about all the options in Drupal as there were about blogging in general. I don’t think it would be a mistake at all to continue to experiment with other configurations. Haven’t had time (and probably won’t this week
to look at the current state of the art, but if it works well, doesn’t require constant babysitting by an admin, and is obvious to the user, I think those are all more important right now than offering what you call “a perfect tool” 
Get ‘em on board, and then maybe later find/offer more options.
MT is out of the running – the project has a budget of exactly $0.00CDN. I won’t deploy MT 2.x (end-of-life software), and can’t get a license for 3.x
But, I think I screwed up a bit in pushing Drupal too early. It provides a LOT of features, and even when they’re 95% deactivated, it still feels like a “bigger” CMS. What the users need is something that “feels” personal, like it’s their own private blogging system (that coincidentally is shared by everyone else). Drupal doesn’t provide that at all – it’s not the goal of Drupal (even with the Blog module).
Yeah, the only bad thing about MT is that is isn’t free anymore. It has the best user administration for blogs and authors, while still feeling like a simple application. What about livejournal?
LiveJournal. hehe… Then, we could have the “mood” blocks for each blog entry, and a dedicated “My Cat Fluffy” category in each blog
[...] My second point relates to WPMU’s competition. Some people are making competitive comparisons, and some of these comparisons are or will be available on the web. For example, D’Arcy Norman is about to evaluate and post about three candidate platforms: WPMU, Drupal, and ELGG. The last one of these was new to me, so I had to go and create a new blog there. [...]
Have you seen Sword (http://fngtps.com/projects/sword/wiki)? It describes itself as:
Just saw your comment in my weblog.
The basic idea behind Sword was to create a tool in which multiple users from the same organisation can create their own weblog. And since Fingertips (http://www.fngtps.com/) has some feeling with developing applications for academic users, we mostly took these academic users as our main public.
We tried to keep things as simple as possible. When you’re logged in everything basically looks the same as when you’re watching the public pages, you just get some extra options and can see your drafts. You can put your post into exactly one category.
The main goal will be to enable academic users to share their thoughts about their daily research and teaching. In time we want them to be able to include LaTeX (well, actually a subset, iTeX) in their posts, so they can publish little pieces of their research papers more easily and share them with other researchers out there.
It’s not going to be a CMS like Drupal. I’ve personally never worked with ELGG, so I cannot really compare.
WPMU, being the multi-user version of WordPress, is quite nice. Personally I think it has too much functionality for a weblog though. Especially the complexity of the admin interface bothers me.
So Sword works quite okay for me at the moment. Support for adding images, trackback, comment feeds and more features like that are added the next couple of weeks. In the mean time, if you want to out the feel of the weblog, just send me an email and I will happily add an account on my current installation.
“It has the best user administration for blogs and authors”… says who?
I do, obviously…
Q.E.D.
Heh
Have you had a crack at WP1.6, they are making it easier and, in my extensive deployment, I haven’t had any whinges really about the interface…
I’m not certain of the requirements from your post, D’Arcy, but have you looked at Blojsom? I’ve been running it for some time, and am mostly happy with the results. I believe you once ran Blosxom – and I’m not certain why you made the switch, but Blojsom is a different beast. Superior to Wordpress in many ways, excepting static page handling.
We’re just on the verge of deploying drupal and my only concern (well, the primary one anyway) revolves around the sense of ownership from an individual blogger’s perspective. I’ve been surprized at how many people have switched themes, added his/her own blog title and blog roll, etc in our current blog software. Still, in the long run, I’m *hoping* this will be a much better solution for us. I continue to montior the great strides taken by ELGG. They’ve accomplished much in a small amount of time.
I’m loving some of the additions that they’re planning for Drupal 4.7 …
Cheers,
Matt
You can also give a try to movabletype. It rocks.
Hey D’Arcy – late to reply cos still quite ill.
I’m taking a keen interest in this one at the moment – is what we need stripped down tools to enpower new and inexperienced users to participate (& hopefully go on to enjoy the benifits of full features later on); better, less intimidating interfaces; different users? – This last one is a joke. But maybe we need to think about different tools for our users and not one size all solutions, even if that tool is as flexible as a blog or other environment. Or maybe it’s how those users are introduced to or supported in using aps.
Personally I don’t think powerful features = necessarily intimidating. Think about something like PowerPoint. Or an email ap. Or even Word. There are a huge host of functions in most common, unintimidating aps which the typical user will never bother with.
I’ll admit right now I’m slightly sceptical about aclearn.nets project to offer stripped down blogs to the people based on b2Evloution (http://fraser.typepad.com/edtechuk/2005/07/blogs_ahoy.html) – but I am very interested in what they’ll support. Maybe you & I could do a podcast review together?
Josie, I find it really hard to hold Word or Powerpoint up as shining examples of “simple software” – they are so bloated that new users are horrified. Simple software isn’t necessarily dumb software, just software that hides complexity better. Word sure doesn’t do that. It’s one of the more intimidating apps I know of…
One of the cooler things in drupal is the concept of user profiles, so you actually could hide more abstract/complicated features from novice users, or expose certain functionality only for a specific subset of users.
Nope – didn’t say they were simple aps D’Arcy, nor am I waving the flag for microsoft here. All I said was that they are examples of compex applications that users find, in my experience, unintimidating to use on a basic level. Partly this is of course to do with users familiarity and peer support, two factors entirely outside the design and specification process.
The user profile function in Drupal does sound really useful. Partly what I’m aiming to instill in people in my role is a kind of fearless curiousity or playfulness with regard to the technologies they use – since so often what I’m primarily trying to overcome is nervousness. My point was – they can’t explore what isn”t there. I can however see both the benifits and drawbacks to this.
B2evolution is BY DEFAULT a multi-user blog. When you install, it creates 4 blogs, one of them being an aggergate of the others !
D’Arcy, thank your for documenting your research here. It is obviously useful to a lot of people, including me.
I’m with you that user adoption is the most important decision criterium. I like WP1.5’s admin interface, and people here seem enthusiastic about v1.6, so this is promising.
Maybe so, but it appears its users don’t read the comments.
It’s not free.
PowerPoint and Word are two of the most poorly designed pieces of software I know. They actually encourage people to misuse them. Nobody ever uses styles and master slides. Instead, everybody keeps clicking on the big B button and changing text size. You end up with spaghetti documents without any valuable semantic information.
Yes, they don’t seem to have a ego problem;-) However, I did download and install their Aroundme software today. The installation itself was smooth enough, but I don’t seem to be able to register and get admin rights. Could you let me know if you have any better luck getting Aroundme to work? Thanks,
Karl, thanks to the pointer to Aroundme. I hadn’t heard if it before. Their bragging on the website makes me wonder, though. It’s surely not the _only_ free social networking and group collaboration platform available today. They might be able to claim best, easiest, or something, but not only (with others like Drupal, Elgg, etc… available freely today)
D’Arcy,
While doing your research have you looked at Aroundme?
It seems to be comparable to ELGG.
cheers,
Hey D’Arcy – Actually they are right (Aroundme folks) – They are registered at GNU and Free software foundation and they are the only “free” social software in town. To get GNU approval you have to ensure that all aspects of code and documentation are under GNU approved licensing – not an easy accreditation to get…it also mean that all their versions will remain free. Not so much “bragging” – read their definition of “free” compared to “open source” and you will see why they earn my respect.
Just for the record – Drupal and alike are publishing systems – they may have modules for X,Y and Z, but Aroundme is build specifically for social networking and group activities. Whilst the software is “young” I do think it deserves it’s own space on the web and should not be compared.
Just downloaded Aroundme and I am installing in on a server. I will let you know my results. I noticed no posts on your site since 2005!
At least this blog anyway!
J – this post is from 2005, but I’ve been regularly blogging. Just hit the “home” link in the blog header, or hit the title in the banner, to get to the front page…