# Wordpress alternatives?



## Minmeo (Sep 4, 2014)

Im looking for something I can use to host a small blog to post YouTube videos to. Wordpress is too big now and often a target of exploits, it has too many features for what I need. What is a good simple blog script that is in use today that is modern, fast and secure? Does not need to be fancy, just needs to work.


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## mojeda (Sep 4, 2014)

Maybe look into Ghost? https://ghost.org/


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## Munzy (Sep 4, 2014)

Wordpress has actually very little exploits, the plugins on the other hand is another story.

Wordpress is used, and if you know how to run it properly it is modern, fast, and secure.

You can try ghost if you like, but it is heavier, slower, and less secure then wordpress.

https://ghost.org/


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## DomainBop (Sep 4, 2014)

> secure?


If it exists at some point there will be a security hole and you'll need to patch it quickly.  Every blogging platform including Ghost (and just about every piece of code ever written) has had vulnerabilities that needed to be patched at some point.

One alternative I've used is B2Evolution.  I've used it on one site for about 8 years but when I want to setup a new blog now it's usually WordPress I go for.


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## Aldryic C'boas (Sep 4, 2014)

Mun, if you're going to take the time to claim that something is insecure, at least give a valid reason for your claim.  I find it rather difficult to take you on your word after your claim of the BlueVM hijack being due to "Namecheap's (lack of) security".


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## nunim (Sep 4, 2014)

WordPress is the defacto standard for blogs these days, if you don't want to worry about security you could always use a hosted service like WordPress.com.

Don't install massive amounts of plugins/themes, lock down your WP install and keep up to date and you'll be fine, but you should take regular backups as well just to be safe.

There was a lightweight blogging software developed by someone at LET awhile ago, bliite, the website seems to be gone but the software is on DropBox:  https://www.dropbox.com/s/u6p5z8t386sbenh/blite-0.1-rc3.tar.gz

You can also take a look at this site for other options:

http://www.opensourcecms.com/scripts/show.php?catid=2&category=Blogs


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## Minmeo (Sep 4, 2014)

Thanks everyone. I remember I used a real simple one in the past that was sort of nice but I can not remember what it was named. I just wanted to know what everyone here uses if they do not use wordpress.


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## Munzy (Sep 4, 2014)

Aldryic C said:


> Mun, if you're going to take the time to claim that something is insecure, at least give a valid reason for your claim.  I find it rather difficult to take you on your word after your claim of the BlueVM hijack being due to "Namecheap's (lack of) security".


Correct in a way, but no one has banged on ghost blog like wordpress. Wordpress is pretty rock solid.

In regards to Bluevm, it was due to namecheap's lack of security. I personally asked Johnston what happened, and he stated someone called Namecheap and impersonated him thus being able to get past all his layers of protection that he did have.


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## clarity (Sep 4, 2014)

Jekyll is another option. It is kind of a CMS.


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## Aldryic C'boas (Sep 4, 2014)

Munzy said:


> I personally asked Johnston what happened, and he stated someone called Namecheap and impersonated him thus being able to get past all his layers of protection that he did have.


I... seriously hope that you simply forgot to colour that text purple.  And further hope that you know better than to take such an assurance at face value.


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## k0nsl (Sep 4, 2014)

And here's some more alternatives. For some reason I fell in love with Hexo, but only used it for a few days because I don't have time to write long posts (e.g "walls of text"). So I stuck it out with WordPress, after all.


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## MannDude (Sep 4, 2014)

I used FlatPress for a while in the past. Unsure if it's still updated or maintained, but was a pretty decent little flat-file blog when I last used it.


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## drmike (Sep 4, 2014)

There is a new Wordpress 4.0 release today BTW....

https://wordpress.org/news/2014/09/benny/

Some interesting new functionality.

I am with the OP on the general weariness of such a popular piece of software and potential for grand ole hacks.

The very lightweight markup/markdown flat file stuff is too high of initial barrier to get familiar with.  Most of those still end up running on top of PHP which is a constant concern for security matters.


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## HalfEatenPie (Sep 4, 2014)

@Munzy and @Aldryic C'boas, while I love you both dearly, please settle your difference via an alternative medium. 

Thanks yall!


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## AThomasHowe (Sep 5, 2014)

clarity said:


> Jekyll is another option. It is kind of a CMS.


I love Jekyll. You'll have to get used to running a compiler when you make a new post but it's amazing and it runs great.


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## spry (Sep 5, 2014)

Hmm, YouTube aye... You might want to check out "Cinematico". It is capable of handling YouTube and Vimeo videos and playlists. — http://cinemati.co/

Otherwise, Ghost, Anchor CMS & Pagekit (still in 'alpha' though) are pretty awesome; simple & light.


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## wlanboy (Sep 5, 2014)

AThomasHowe said:


> I love Jekyll. You'll have to get used to running a compiler when you make a new post but it's amazing and it runs great.


Second this.

I fell in love with that HTML generators.

You have content and you have a theme and they generate plain html files out of it (with automatic generated links, tags, etc).

And there are great tools like Octopress that are based on Jekyll.

If you don't like Ruby there is Pelican or Nikola too - for the Phyton lovers out there.

They all support ssh/sftp for upload so you do not have any code on your vps.


Good luck in finding security holes in plain html files.


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## sv01 (Sep 5, 2014)

+1 for pelican, easy to use and  no database at all.

pelican limited 1 category per post, but I can live with that by using tag


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## vRozenSch00n (Sep 5, 2014)

I have used http://snewscms.com/ for quite a while, it's nice and simple.


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## fm7 (Sep 5, 2014)

As hosted solution I like Medium

https://medium.com/about/

*A Platform and Blogging Tool, Medium Charms Writers*

Evan Williams is at it again.

...

When he stepped aside as chief executive of Twitter in 2010, Mr. Williams wanted to get back into blogging and found the tools creaky and insufficient. His is not an uninformed opinion. Before he started Twitter, he developed and sold the blogging software Blogger to Google. His entire career has been built on creating tools that let people make their thoughts public.

“It feels like these blogging tools haven’t really evolved in a decade,” he said. “When I looked at that, I thought, ‘Do I really want to get into this again? Am I just stuck in a rut?’ I did some investing and incubating, but came back around to this as what I wanted to do.”

Full article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/26/business/media/a-platform-and-blogging-tool-medium-charms-writers.html


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## DomainBop (Sep 5, 2014)

> I fell in love with that HTML generators.
> 
> You have content and you have a theme and they generate plain html files out of it (with automatic generated links, tags, etc).





> They all support ssh/sftp FTP for upload so you do not have any code on your vps.


That's exactly what Microsoft Front Page did in 1998.. 



> no database at all.


[insert 1998 comment again here]

tl;dr I really haven't been able to get excited about the new generation of simple HTML generators for some reason...


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## wlanboy (Sep 6, 2014)

DomainBop said:


> That's exactly what Microsoft Front Page did in 1998..


[insert 2008 comment here]

tl;dr I really haven't been able to get excited about the new generation of simple HTML generators (CMS) written in php.


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## AThomasHowe (Sep 7, 2014)

Lol not quite.

I also like how Jekyll uses markdown for blog posts - I think markdown goes well with writing and you can write it anywhere.


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## jhadley (Sep 7, 2014)

AnchorCMS is great if you need something simple.


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## FHN-Eric (Sep 9, 2014)

Munzy said:


> In regards to Bluevm, it was due to namecheap's lack of security. I personally asked Johnston what happened, and he stated someone called Namecheap and impersonated him thus being able to get past all his layers of protection that he did have.


Last I checked, Namecheap didn't have phone support.


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## wlanboy (Sep 9, 2014)

AThomasHowe said:


> I also like how Jekyll uses markdown for blog posts - I think markdown goes well with writing and you can write it anywhere.


And markdown can be transfered into any output format too.


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## Geek (Sep 9, 2014)

I've had Ghost running on my personal domain (http://johnedel.me) for about four months. I've enjoyed it's ...simple complexity if you will. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a _developer_, but I can see some technical advantages of going that route.  I don't have nearly enough of anything on there for it to be a high-traffic environment so I can't really comment on that part of it. Hardly needs any resources at all if that's all you're using it for.

It doesn't seem like it was really meant to be administered through control panels or script installers, but I was surprised to see it working with Softaculous + InterWorx on SL 6. cPanel .... not so much although I recall needing a second I.P. not bound to Apache being needed to start node.js when I last attempted it.  Kind of nice when you think about it. A little more sophistication I guess? Or at least more effort than clicking through a WP install. I had to do a little reading beforehand.

Can't really say much yet in terms of security.  When I got in and started playing around with themes, I thought it would be something incredibly different, but I kind of got the "ohh yeah, okay, i gotcha" feel about it. It seems like you could harden your surroundings and be pretty well safe, but who knows for sure any more.  Nonetheless, it's pretty slick.


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