Blogging platform, simple forum ?

[luis]

Hi, I never kept a blog or never really looked for what it's available on the Net to do so, probably because I never had something I wanted to say.

Now I'm writing a library, something I think I will eventually make available to the PB community, so I'm *pondering* the idea of keeping some kind of a public diary to talk sometimes about it, this for two reasons:

1) I would like to explain from time to time what's I'm doing and why I'm doing it, mostly to get some feedback, suggestions, critics, etc. from PB users interested in it or just two exchange ideas on the general subject.

2) In the end it could serve as a sort of extra documentation, maybe also a sort of FAQ, for when the library will be complete enough to be released at least in its 0.1 form.

So I'm looking for something possibly free, without ads or with very limited not obnoxious ones, reliable, with an history of good security (not continually defaced or used at target practice to spread malware by encoding stuff in its pages) and it would be nice if I could backup its contents from time to time. Obviously people should be able to post comments to have some kind of dialogue. Another problem... spam ?
Probably I'm asking too much, but the manual backup would be nice to restore all easily in case of problems without the need to copy and paste all from scratch (losing comments too, I expect).

I suppose the backup is already kept by the provider, but having some direct control on it would be a plus.

Alternatively I could just hack something together or maybe there are easy blog software I could install on a machine (not mine) running PHP (I would prefer to avoid that).

Maybe this is not the best solution either. Maybe a simple forum software could be better solution.

Unfortunately I cannot keep a dedicate local machine online, so I cannot host it by myself

If you have some suggestions... thanks

[Tenaja]

Joomla and Wordpress are the standards, although there are newer ones. They all have spam issues, most of which can be dealt with by implementing a (readily-available) anti-spam deal. I tried a wordpress site last year, and got about 20 spam a day until I enabled the "answer the question" anti-spam tool. Then none at all. I was kicking myself for not enabling it sooner.

Edit: they both have countless plug-ins available. Joomla seems to be heavier (feature-wise).

[Danilo]

I would also recommend to get some webspace with database + PHP, and
install a Web Content Management System (CMS).

Wordpress is the simplest (to use) in my opinion, and for a full-power CMS I prefer Drupal.
Tested also Joomla! and didn't really like it. But that's personal preferences and tastes.

All have many plugins/addons available. Blog, Forum, Code highlighters, shops, ... everything you can imagine.
Took me 2 or 3 days to understand how Drupal works. I was at the point shortly before giving up, and then
I suddenly understood it, and from there everything was nice.

Your own domain and web space with PHP, Database, and eMail is cheap nowadays. Less than 5 Euro/month.
You just upload the unpacked Wordpress or Drupal files onto your web space by FTP, and then you usually
run install.php from within your browser to setup the database and login name + password.
Management is all done within the browser. You log-in to your site in browser and manage your site there,
the CMS have an HTML GUI for that.

Because this CMS are free, you may want to test yourself what's best for you. You just need
some webspace with database and PHP for testing. A local web server could be good enough
for testing.

[Joakim Christiansen]

You also have Google's Blogger.com if you want to get started very fast without any bullshit.

[tj1010]

Blogger is good because it's free and you don't have to worry much about ddos because of Google management. The XML based layout wrappers are annoying though which is why there is no decent layout market for it..

Wordpress is the cleanest internally and externally of all the blog and CMS platforms. Joomla is a nightmare and has bad patch management but companies and marketers still use it for some reason..

For pure forum I go with PHPBB for the same reason as WP. Whatever you do don't use Vbulletin it has garbage internal design(I've done extensive work around it's hook, panel, and daemon system) and insanely bad support and management, and SM has poor patch management and under-developed internals.

[luis]

Thanks for the suggestions, if I would do something like that I think I would use something I could control, so it would something I could install, backup, configure, etc.

I was hoping for something lighter, my requirements are really simple.

Just an interface to post and the ability to have comments. Nothing else. A full CMS (nice as it is) is really overkill, I don't need it.

[electrochrisso]

Check this one out luis, it might be what you are looking for.
http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/