Comments on: I’ve chosen Serendipity

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 04:45:57 +0000

You’re both right, though it annoys me more when people code for one DB and not the other with no good reason.

I prefer PostgreSQL for several reasons. First off, it has a much smaller memory footprint than MySQL out of the box (about 1/5 the RAM). And even after tweaking, it uses a lot less RAM.

Secondly, PostgreSQL is a lot better about being standards-compliant. It supports full ACID transactions everywhere. MySQL still only supports them on certain table types, making it difficult to deal with in a sane fashion.

Third, PostgreSQL is rock solid. I have never had to do a table “recovery” like I have to do with MySQL periodically. PostgreSQL is there and just works, day in and day out.

Finally, the 8.x series of PostgreSQL is *fast*. My anecdotal evidence suggests it is outperforming MySQL in some situations now.

By: Robert Treat

Robert Treat — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 00:34:17 +0000

I’m not sure that he does prefer postgresql (i hope so) but rather he doesnt like developers who code solely for mysql, probably because he sees it as being somewhat sloppy was of developing.

If you are interested in why some people prefer postgresql over mysql, check out the following links:
http://feedlounge.com/blog/2005/11/20/switched-to-postgresql/
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/6286
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/site-mysql-postgresql-1
http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/tim20001112.php3

By: The Changelog

The Changelog — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 21:57:48 +0000

Well, finally! I’ve switched to Serendipity!

The best part: comment spam blocking that works. So to those of you that had trouble commenting on this site… try again. It should just work! (And I’m sorry you had to put up with the hassle so long.)

By: yellowdesk

yellowdesk — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 17:20:04 +0000

JG:
Could you comment in a comparative way about
how mySQL is not desirable for you, and how PostgreSQL is?
Just wondering–I don’t yet use either, but anticipate needing to rely one of them in the coming year.
Thanks.

By: Michael Janssen

Michael Janssen — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 17:05:52 +0000

When you finish with the tool, I would be very interested in it. I am looking at moving from Drupal to serendipity as well (giving up the dream that I’ll have a supersite) and would love a conversion script which saves the hierarchy (I’ll probably have to mess with it a little, since I have multiple category hierarchies)

By: jgoerzen

jgoerzen — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 14:05:44 +0000

There are several problems with that approach:

1) It doesn’t preserve my category hierarchy

2) It doesn’t pull in all the comments

3) It doesn’t necessarily preserve the same numeric ID for each story, which is something I really need (so I can make existing links continue to work)

I’ve got my own conversion tool mostly done already though.

By: Brian Puccio

Brian Puccio — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 10:40:15 +0000

Yes, you can set Drupal to display a huge number (where this huge number is the total number of posts) in the RSS feed and migrate that way.

By: Simon Morris

Simon Morris — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 05:31:10 +0000

Hello,

Did you know that serendipity can import from RSS. So if Drupal can export all of your previous posts you can convert that way.

~sm

By: skippy

skippy — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 23:23:41 +0000

WordPress does not support PostgreSQL. There exists a stagnant fork of an ancient release (1.2, I think) that does support PostgreSQL, but that's it. Although WordPress uses an EZ-SQL library, the database schema uses a lot of MySQL-isms. Last I saw, there was some discussion about removing as many of those MySQL-isms as possible to make it easier for folks interested in placing WordPress atop a different database; but the core developers are only willing to commit to MySQL. As for plugins, check wp-plugins.org, wp-plugins.net, and the Codex plugin listing. There exist a lot of anti-spam solutions for WordPress. Akismet is the popular default, but it's a black box. Spam Karma 2 is also widely used. Bad Behavior is available, but too aggressive for my tastes. There's also Eric Meyer's Gatekeeper plugin, which provides a text-only captcha, which by all accounts does a darned good job of fending off the spambots without overly annoying real human beings.