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Tuesday, March 28. 2006

Posted by John Goerzen in Software, The ChangeLog

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I've chosen Serendipity

I wrote the other day that I was considering Serendipity, and had a few concerns about it.

Those concerns have now been pretty well resolved.

I also looked at WordPress. It looked like it had more features, but the whole lack of a central plugin store bothered me. I'd have to scour all over the net to find plugins, and half of them are just on a random person's blog. Very few mentioned support for WordPress 2.0; most were for 1.5.

Then I looked at anti-spam options in both. The major anti-spam plugin for Wordpress had two big strikes against it, in my mind: it's not Free software, and it doesn't work with PostgreSQL.

I am really ticked off by webapps that only support MySQL. There is no reason not to support PostgreSQL (especially when WordPress itself does).

So I am going with Serendipity.

Now, I have to write a Drupal to Serendipity conversion tool.

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Switched to Serendipity!
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.)
Weblog: The Changelog
Tracked: Mar 29, 15:57

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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 <a href="http://dev.wp-plugins.org/">wp-plugins.org</a>, <a href="http://wp-plugins.net/">wp-plugins.net</a>, and <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins">the Codex plugin listing</a>.

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.
#1 skippy (Homepage) on 2006-03-28 17:23 (Reply)
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
#2 Simon Morris (Homepage) on 2006-03-28 23:31 (Reply)
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.
#2.1 Brian Puccio (Homepage) on 2006-03-29 04:40 (Reply)
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.
#2.2 jgoerzen on 2006-03-29 08:05 (Reply)
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)
#2.2.1 Michael Janssen (Homepage) on 2006-03-29 11:05 (Reply)
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.
#3 yellowdesk on 2006-03-29 11:20 (Reply)
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
#3.1 Robert Treat (Homepage) on 2006-03-29 18:34 (Reply)
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.
#3.1.1 John Goerzen (Homepage) on 2006-03-29 22:45 (Reply)

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