Blog as Project Tool

Yesterday, I set up a blog for our internal development team to use as a project tool. We'll use it to capture knowledge that would otherwise be lost in individual emails and cube conversations.

I looked at a number of blog platforms, but I was able to narrow the field quickly based on my criteria:

First, it had to be free, and under active development - I want support, but I don't have a budget to pay for it, and I'm willing to give back where I can with bug reports and such.

Second, I wanted a pure Java blog tool. As a developer who works primarily in Java, I wanted something that I can rip apart and understand without too much frustration.

Third, I needed a tool that allowed multiple users to post to one blog. This cut out one of the big contenders, Roller Weblogger. I've been looking at Roller for some time, but I couldn't find enough information on its capability for multiple users to post to a single blog.

I finally settled on Blojsom. One of Blojsom's big selling points is that it uses the file system to store blog entries. ("Look Ma! No database!") This is an idea Erik Hatcher sold me on a couple of years ago. A quick install and I was blogging in just a few minutes.

Blojsom is a decent blog platform. Setting up users is easy, and it comes with a number of good templates out of the box.

I believe Blojsom's weakness comes from its flexibility - it uses an event driven plug-in model, which allows limitless extensibility. I don't really need a lot of flexibility, I just need something that's easy to configure. Having said that, I find Blojsom's admin console in need of some design help. It's just not terribly intuitive, and doesn't leverage existing, accepted UI practices. All the options you need are there, it's just a matter of figuring out how to use them. This goes for the Blojsom web site as well - all the info you need is at your fingertips, somewhere.

As for support, I did run into a configuration problem with blog comments, but David Czarnecki responded to my request on the user list within minutes with a fix for me.

So, despite the admin console, Blojsom meets all my needs quite nicely - free, good support, java, multiple users. I'm also going to spend the obligatory 10 minutes on Pebble, if for no other reason than the website screams simplicity, but I'm more than happy with Blojsom.

Only time will tell if the team accepts blogging as a communication medium.