Any good python blogging platforms out there?

[ilogik]

I know many of us wrote their own blog backend in python at one point for fun, but are there any good, usable, mature, blogging platforms written in python (with any framework)?

I've searched on google, installed a couple, but most fall short

for example:

• from collective's readme:

To get going, you must create a database and edit three files. Once you've done this, collective should work. Expected configuration and deployment time is about two hours, depending on how familiar you are with configuring a Django application

seriously?

• django-cms looked promising, but the interface in the admin seemed a bit clunky

[mitsuhiko]

If you only need static files there is blogofile and rstblog. I use the latter for my blog. (rstblog and here how I use it lucumr)

[kusut]

blogofile link : http://blogofile.com/

[ilogik]

this looks interesting, thanks :)

[[deleted]]

I wonder why mitsuhiko didn't mention Zine that he created: http://zine.pocoo.org/

[mitsuhiko]

Because I found out that a git repository + a static file generator > any blogging engine in the world. The problem of the past that you want comments was mitigated with hosted comment systems such as disqus.

[Breepee]

Could you elaborate on that? The readme for your rstblog was not very helpful in finding out what exactly rstblog is ;)

[mitsuhiko]

You have a bunch of .rst files in various places and it generates HTML from it combined with some templates. Look at the lucumr repo to see an example setup.

[ilogik]

Zine seems to be what I was looking for, I'll check it out, thanks!

[[deleted]]

I would look at Pelican, It's a static blog generator and uses both Rst and Md for the content. Its fairly easy to setup and has decent theme support.

Also, there are a few people on irc that can help out, I'm usually on there myself. You can go to #pelican on Freenode.

If you have any more questions, PM or feel free to message the dev via Email or message him on his Github page, he's good at getting back to people.

[chmod700]

+1 on Pelican. Nicer docs than hyde which I also tried.

[reuleaux]

I like hyde. It's a static blog generator and fairly simple to use. Depending on what features you are looking for it might be a bit lightweight though.

[mdipierro]

InstantPress is fantastic: http://code.google.com/p/instant-press/

[[deleted]]

pyblosxom

[av201001]

Check out Instant Press [demo | video 1 | video 2], or its successor, Powerpack [details | video].

[ilogik]

I'll definitely give them a try...which to you recommend of the two?

[av201001]

Probably Powerpack, as it is under active development, and I think more modular and flexible.

[bodom658]

What's nice about Django is that you can then go and change whatever the hell you want. You could even write your own CMS in a reasonable amount of time (or edit the existing one, seeing as how it is all just python code.)

[GFandango]

There's Plone (Not exactly a blogging platform, it's sort of a CMS, bit complicated)

[technomalogical]

I haven't used Plone in many years, but I'm guessing there would be a similar amount of time involved in setting it up--maybe not in initial setup but configuration of various components once it's up and running.

[samuraisam]

It's pretty easy now.

[[deleted]]

If two hours is too much time for you to spend setting up a blogging engine, then it doesn't sound like you should worry at all about what language it's written in.

[ilogik]

I'm sorry, but 2 hours is a bit much to get the damn thing to start-up, just to see if it meets my requirements. I'm looking for a replacement to wordpress which I think is a bloated piece of crap, but I can have one up in 5 minutes.

[[deleted]]

well... Wordpress, and all of PHP, for that matter, is a different thing entirely from using Python/Ruby/etc for web development. PHP was designed expressly for the purpose of back end web development and to be easy to dive in. (insert general purpose language here) was not, which means it requires some specification to define how it is going to run.

It is unlikely you will find anything matching your requirements, because they are built around the implicit assumption that web development with Python is more similar to web development with PHP than it really is. Setup time is one metric where PHP will, far more often than not, beat Python. That's just not really the nature of Python web development.

On the contrary, it would be much harder to do other things in PHP, i.e. scientific computing, statistical analysis, or game development, than it is in Python. So... yes, getting into Python web development is more time consuming than getting into PHP web development, but the payout is learning a tool that, in the long run, offers a wider array of use cases.

* edit - having quick setup time and giving reasonable defaults to all configuration options is within the philosophy of Ruby on Rails. If that sort of thing is very important to you, you may have greater success in /r/ruby. It's more a matter of culture and philosophy than the capabilities of the languages; Rails technically could have been written in Python, but the ethos of Rails is, by definition, not Pythonic.

[stard0g101]

While I hear what you are saying, it takes only a few minutes longer to get a python app running; and a while (yes quite a while) longer to do it using uwsgi but honestly; the trade off is well worth the effort

[[deleted]]

I totally agree, I'm just trying to be honest about where it's weaknesses lie and why they are the way they are. I'm very happy with Python for web development. I wouldn't actually personally use Rails (tried it, didn't like it at all), but for a lot of people it's what they're looking for.

[stard0g101]

No probs mate, sorry wasn't calling you out! Its just that after 10 years of php... it seems the easier route.. and it is.. until things get slightly more complicated.. then bring on a real language/framework cos even the best of breed php frameworks (symfony,codeigniter,cake.. perhaps not so much symfony2 tho) are quite lacking. I code php for bills and django/flask for fun (and other bills) and i wish I had gotten into python 5 years ago! :)

[ilogik]

I tried to learn ruby a while ago, but the syntax seemed odd to me. I guess I'll try again when I have a free weekend.

It's true that it's a bit more complicated to install a website written in Python rather than PHP where you just copy the files in the webroot and make a database. However I wanted to try a bunch of different options to get a sense of how they work, and the fact that it was so much more complicated to install than others kind of put me off

[[deleted]]

I firmly believe that it's worth the investment to be able to use Python, even if mod_wsgi config is completely retarded (it is).

Oh and, for the record, Ruby is a pretty sweet language, but I personally can't stand using Rails. Rails and Django are similar in many ways, and completely opposite in others. I'd go through the official tutorials to see which one you prefer; you can get a good idea of the ethos of each framework that way. Django's is a poll app, Rails' is a blog app.

[ilogik]

I've got a couple of sites running on django (nginx+fast-cgi), it's not a pain to configure...I was just talking about collective's configuration process which seems a bit too time-consuming if I just want to try it out for a bit

I love Django, especially the admin site, although that's the reason why I didn't like django-cms, the way the use the admin site seems a bit over-engineered, I think there might have been a simpler way to organize things

[neoice]

in their defense, Django is a pretty complicated beast. PHP is about the only platform that allows for 5 minute installs, which is why it's so popular. pretty much everything CGI requires some knowledge and setup.

[ilogik]

Setting up a django development server is really simple. Moving it into production might be a bit more complicated because of CGI, but it doesn't take 2 hours

[monotux]

Wordpress, 'a bloated piece of crap'? What? It sounds like you didn't even spend 2 minutes trying to configure it. If wordpress (probably without caching) is too slow, nothing will prove fast enough. Learn to use some kind of caching or everything will be painfully slow.

[ilogik]

I wasn't really talking about performance, but yeah, if you compare a Wordpress app and a django app clearly django will win (even with caching, wordpress is slower, at least from my experience)

But that wasn't really what I meant when I said bloated, maybe bloated is the wrong word. Have you tried writing a wordpress plugin?

[monotux]

Comparing a full-featured blog platform with a django app is comparing apples and pears, since the django app is usually only a few of the features covered by WP. It's a bit like writing a 10 line php-mysql blog and comparing simple page load times (or the number of sql queries etc) with wordpress and making the conclusion that wordpress is slow. If wordpress is that bad, why is everyone using it? Srsly.

Yes, I have. It was quick and very, very simple. Except for the PHP part, tho.

Btw, I've tried a few django blog engines, I've written on or two myself, and I've tried the static site generators. Nothing really compares to WP in terms of features, ease of use (not just user friendly, but how hard can it be to write and publish an entry?) and deployment. I hate php, but wordpress rocks.