According to Quantcast, Tumblr is now receiving 10.7 million uniques when compared against Typepad’s 10.6 million stateside, although the gap between the two services expands once you include international users.

Considered by some to be a distant cousin to WordPress (as they have  ”same blood“), b2evolution has continued to evolve at a seemingly faster pace than its younger cousin (as b2evolution is on version 3.3.3 while WordPress is on 2.9.2).

Although boasting numerous plugins, template skins and a small but passionate community, b2evolution has nearly faded from the public spot light as most people outside of the “realm known as geek” have never heard of b2evolution (as it brings up blanks stares, unlike WordPress or Blogger).

Despite its humble reputation, the b2evolution crew announced in January that they are planning on releasing version 4.0 in a few months. But the question remains: will it be enough to save this dying brand?

Even though there are some bloggers who prefer b2evolution over WordPress, a quick Google search reveals that the vast majority of users are leaving the platform in order to embrace the WP faith.

This could be due to its user interface which although powerful is not the most elegant thing to look at (especially if one compares it against WordPress, Blogger or Movable Type).

While I could name several blogs supporting the WP brand (like Mashable, Inside Blackberry, and many, many more), the only prominent blog supporting b2evolution (that I know of) is the Moon Society (disclaimer: I occasionally write for that blog, and have in the past asked the leaders to switch away from b2evolution–hence this post).

Unless b2evolution 4.0 releases something innovative and perhaps even embraces the world of mobile like WordPress (which is now upon Android, Blackberry and the mighty iPhone), I do not see a healthy future for this platform–although I am hoping that somewhere some b2 geek can hopefully prove me wrong in the not so distant future (hint, hint).

For some that includes blogging, which might explain many of the “how do I start a blog” questions that I  receive, as well as all the costs associated with starting one (at least for those who choose to self host their own content).

While there are many excellent blog platforms out there that do not require a person to have a server, for some the price range might be beyond their budget (especially those with monthly plans).

After scouring the internet for more hours than I care to admit, here are four blogging platforms for aspiring probloggers that cost less than $25 a year.

Note: I based this list on 4 criteria: customization, cost (under $25 which is about $2/month), security and the ability to insert ads.

Blogger

Backed by the muscle of Google, Blogger has become the most popular blogging platform in the world.

Users can easily customize the template (or import their own), as well as host the site upon their own custom domain.

Users can upload up to 1 GB of images as well as video (the latter which thus far has no limit), and supports mobile blogging (especially on the iPhone).

Price: Free, although users can pay $5-$20/year for 20GB-80GB of image space.

Live Journal

Considered one of the oldest blogging platforms around, Live Journal has an interesting history which includes being acquired (and then sold off) by Six Apart.

While Live Journal does offer a basic account for those who embrace all things free, the platform really only begins to shine once users take advantage of its premium features.

These include the ability to customize the layout, as well as insert ads (like Adsense) upon the blog.

Price: Premium features costs $25/year, although users who embrace automatic drafts will only pay $19.95/year.

OnSugar

Powered by Drupal, OnSugar made what was once regarded by many as a CMS for geeks to an elegant blog platform for the masses.

Users of OnSugar can customize the template of the site, as well as use Getty images without the threat of being sued (provided you maintain the onsugar domain name).

OnSugar (to my knowledge) does not offer a premium feature of any kind, although that may change once the platform becomes more popular.

Price: Free

Tumblr

Sometimes seen as a cross between Twitter and a traditional blog, Tumblr embraces a “keep it simple” approach when it comes to blogging (or microblogging as the platform blurs the line here).

Despite its simple layout, Tumblr natively supports video, audio and imaging uploading, making it a full featured blog platform that (in some ways) rivals the previous three mentioned above.

Price: Free

Any others?

If you know of any other sites, feel free to enlighten us in the comment section below.

As far as the sites above, all of them allow users to blog upon a custom domain, which should help users short on cash compete against those who choose to host their own content.

Joomla Admin Mobile, an iPhone application created by Covert Apps empowers users belonging to the Joomla faith to not only edit pages and articles, but also add multiple images to them without throwing all of the images at the bottom of the post (like WordPress 2) or near the top (like Squarespace).

Priced at $9.99, Joomla Admin Mobile (or JAM for short) sells at a much higher premium than other Joomla apps, although JAM does offer a few features lacking from its rivals.

What I Loved

Just like most of the other iPhone blogging apps, JAM allows Joomla users to upload images to their server.

However what separates JAM from rivals is not only can edit the image from within the app, without having to launch a photo editing program (like iRetouch) in order to touch up a picture.

Users can easily crop, adjust the image size or rotate pictures (in many fun and various forms) from within the app, saving times and energy when composing an article or section.

Another awesome feature that I love about JAM is the ability to edit user accounts directly from the app itself without having to power up the laptop.

Site admins can grant (or take away) access levels of registered users, change their passwords, email accounts or even screen names on a whim, and last (but not least) block users from logging in if they suspect an account has been compromised.

Admins can also email users registered upon the site from within the app, which is helpful if they suspect an account has been hacked (in which you can alert them of a new password).

Last but not least, JAM does support expandable post summaries, without having to hard code it in (which I have to do with my WordPress app).

What I disliked

Most of what I did not like about JAM had to do with the user interface which is quite ugly when compared to both the WordPress 2 and Squarespace iPhone apps.

When it comes to composing an article, I felt that there was too many “taps” compared to its rivals, which allow you to edit an article immediately instead of showing you a preview first.

Although I did love the basic photo editing features, I did wish the app came with a formating bar for HTML links, similar to what the LiveJournal.app has.

Also adding video support (perhaps via YouTube?) would be nice as well, as it could help JAM stand out from the crowd (as not many blogging apps have embraced video, despite the launch of the iPhone 3GS).

Conclusion

JAM is a powerful app for Joomla lovers, and perhaps one of the most powerful CMS/blogging apps that I have come across ever since WordPress and BlogPress entered Steve Jobs backyard.

JAM’s closest rival is BlogPress, although the latter does not upload images to your server but via third parties (Flickr and Picasa).

Despite being the only app to fully support Joomla, Covert Apps may want to adjust their pricing of JAM, as many users whine about apps being priced at $5, let alone $10 (mainly due to the global recession).

Overall Covert Apps is a “must have app” for Joomla lovers, and may help the Joomla community enter the blogging mainstream alongside of both Blogger and WordPress.

Unfortunately the number of iPhone blogging apps embracing video has not improved since then, despite the fact that video editing apps are now appearing within Steve Job’s  backyard (read App store).

After a very long search upon the app store, I was able to locate several apps embracing video blogging (or as some call it, “vidblogging“), as well as a few for Android freaks (that I have discovered online).

Tumblr (iPhone: Free, Android: UK£0.99)

Sometimes described as a cross between Twitter and a blog, Tumblr thus far is the only official blog company to fully embrace video blogging.

The official app also embraces podcasting too, although due to Apple’s ridiculous ”we hate flash” stance, you can not play them on your iPhone.

To my knowledge there is no official Android App for Tumblr, although users can purchase Tumblroid for a small fee (which also supports video)

BlogPress (iPhone: $2.99)

BlogPress is perhaps one of my favorite video blogging clients due to the fact that I can easily insert multiple videos (as well as images) within a single post (a feature lacking from most vidblogging apps).

The app was anointed by Google last year to represent Blogger on the app store, although their premium app also supports WordPress, Movable Type/Typepad, Live Journal, Drupal, Windows Live Spaces and even Joomla.

Video’s are uploaded to YouTube (so that you can watch them upon your phone), although I would recommend uploading them via Wifi unless you have a strong 3G signal.

CellSpin (iPhone: $1.99, Android: $1.99)

CellSpin is perhaps one of my favorite podcasting apps, although it was also one of the first (at least to memory) to embrace video blogging.

Similar to BlogPress, you can upload a video to multiple sites at once with a brief description underneath, although the videos are encoded with flash (making them un-viewable for iPhone fans).

CellSpin supports Blogger, WordPress, Windows Live Spaces, Live Journal and Typepad and is available for both Android users and iPhone lovers.

ShoZu (iPhone: $4.99, Android: Not Yet)

ShoZu is similar to CellSpin except that it gives users more blogging platforms to post to (like Vox, CellFish and many other “unknown” platforms).

While it does allow you to view the video’s posted to your site via iPhone, it does not embed the video’s directly upon your blog, forcing users to click through in order to watch the video.

The price is kind of steep for what it offers (as the user interface is not the greatest) so I would not recommend purchasing this app unless you blog upon Vox (or another random site).

PixelPipe (iPhone: Free, Android: $0.99?!)

Pixelpipe probably has more connections to more blog sites than any app that I have seen on the app store to date.

While the app does support video blogging, I did find it to be extremely buggy and the user interface was underwhelming at best.

Android lovers may have more luck than us iPhone cultists,  although the fact that Google phone fans are charged while iPhone users are not is something I found to be “slightly odd.”

Any Others?

While there are more video blogging apps for Android (such as Blogaway and TAnDI), outside of Twitter there are very few video blogging apps for the iPhone.

Hopefully this will change in the future, especially with rumors about Apple launching a new iPhone equipped with a 5 mega-pixel camera.

Question:

Answer: Not enough.

iDrupal, an iPhone blogging app under development by Steve McKenzie and Zaheeren (from India) has been in “geek purgatory” for almost a year now, with no sign it will enter Steve Jobs playground any time soon.

Originally started by McKenzie out of the kindness of his heart (and wallet), iDrupal was able to receive a sponsor last October which gave some Drupal geeks hope that this app would be out soon.

A few months later and an elegant Drupal app has yet to hit the app store.

Unless McKenzie can work out his mad coding skills (and I have no doubt that he can), it looks like those of the Drupal faith may have to wait until spring before the app see’s the light of day (on the app store at least).

While iLovers can currently access Drupal via BlogPress, they are unable to upload images upon their own servers (forcing them to rely upon either Flickr or Picasa Web Albums).

Hopefully McKenzie’s iPhone app will be able to change all of that as Drupal’s lack of iPresence doesn’t help their image as a superior rival to WordPress.

(Image: Early screenshot of the upcoming iDrupal UI, Credit: Steve McKenzie)

Albeit still only an Alpha release, the bang in the community was big and I suppose for the Drupal users it was very welcome news to finally be able to look forward to certain features like Custom Fields which are standard since a really long time in the blogging community. Drupal 6 already brought an image uploader and tags to the software and Drupal 7 now brings more features WordPress and users of other blog software have known for a while already.

What’s new in Drupal 7? With Drupal 7 come image editing, integrated updater and custom fields.

Revamped User Interface
An incredible amount of work has gone into improving the user experience and administration interface. The new administration theme “Seven”, the overlay module, the dashboard and the configurable shortcut bar, all lead to a much more user-friendly interface. In-place editing is enabled for blocks and nodes by default, so modifying the content of a site becomes much simpler.

Custom Fields
Drupal 7 bundles in the ability to add custom fields, similar in functionality to the Content Construction Kit (CCK) module. However, fields are no longer limited only to content types; they can be added to users, taxonomy terms, and other entities. Fields also have support for translations.

Image Handling
Drupal 7 brings native image handling to core. Image fields may be added to content, and have image styles applied to them, such as scaling, cropping, and other effects.

Update Manager
Building on Drupal 6′s Update module, which keeps site administrators informed when new module and theme releases are available, the new Update Manger module can also install and upgrade modules and themes.

Front-end “under-the-hood” improvements
A new render API allows for highly granular theming, core template files have been revamped to provide more semantic markup, Drupal 7 now has built-in RDFa support, includes jQuery UI and a new AJAX framework, and a new core theme “Stark” which exposes Drupal’s markup directly for those who want to dive in and start theming.
In addition, Drupal 7 has several major accessibility enhancements, making it the most accessible release of Drupal to date!

Back-end “under-the-hood” improvements
A revamped database layer resolving nearly all limitations in the Drupal 6 database layer, automated testing framework, new PHP stream-based file API that supports private and public files simultaneously, revamped node access system, new hooks for more flexible system interaction, an Entity API, a job queue API, and many, many, many more improvements.

Drupal 7 is also the most scalable release to date, with features such as built-in proxy server support, advanced caching techniques, and Content Delivery Network support for static files.

If you’re a fan of Drupal or alpha versions, you can read more about the announcement and download Drupal 7 Alpha 1 here. I bet you’ll have to wait until at least 2011 before ‘Gold’ status is reached though.

Issues with scheduled posts should be resolved and the same applies to feed parsing errors in the admin dashboard. Update your blogs now via the build-in updater or download the latest WordPress update now.

I personally have not had time yet to extensively test the new release but expectations are very high. In the past I have called Expression Engine the best self-hosted blogging platform on this site and am certainly looking forward to compare the new version to WordPress which I have come to love enough to use daily and customise for almost all projects, but often I have preferred the ease of EE 1.6.x when tailoring sites.

But First Things First.

The newly released EE2.0 PB (Public Beta) comes with a price and a new pricing structure:

• Freelancer: $99.95
• Non-commercial License: $149.95
• Commercial License: $299.95

Although Expression Engine 1.6.8 Core still available is, there is no free Core version for EE2.0, instead EllisLab offers a 30-day free demo download. It certainly is a daring move and although many labour has gone in the release (more than 2 years), one can only wonder if EllisLab is cutting of the ever shrinking community and pricing itself out of the market. In a sector with as main competitors the free and open source platforms WordPress and Movable Type, this bald move must be admired. When Six Apart announced a change in licensing structure in 2004 WordPress almost single-handedly won the market and some years later SA announced a new opensource version of MT, which was released end 2007 but MT had already lost its position as market leader. Is EE headed for a similar obscurity?

It must also be said that the standard license fee has increased with $50 for normal users. To make the platform more appealing for developers and designers there is a new Freelancer license at $99.95. One of the biggest differences when comparing EE to WordPress is the availability of plugins and the new license structure is not bound to help the Expression Engine community.

That said, I am looking forward to play with EE2.0 over the next 30 days before I decide whether I want to invest in a license for something I can have freely somewhere else. A license I mainly need to continue playing with the platform and promote EE as a viable and (hopefully still) better alternative.
It will be sad if the license structure will seal the future of EE as I would love to see more choice and more viable alternatives to WordPress. I secretly hoped that EE2.0 would become open source like other platforms but who am I. Now I must play with EE, I only have 30 days!

Can you imagine replacing WordPress with EE? What impact would it have on your business, especially when running several blogs?

Update: Expression Engine 2.0.0 PB released (yes version 2.0.0).

Squarespace has done a phenominal job in creating an official iPhone app for their users, one which may make Blogger guru’s and WordPress disciples jealous.

While it supports the basics of iBlogging (photo uploading, categories & tags, drafts, editing previous posts, etc.), the Squarespace app also boasts a few extra notable features that make it shine against it’s rival blogging apps.

Geek Stats Galore!

The Squarespace app comes with an advanced analytics packaged baked within, displaying not only traffic to the blog, but also SEO, RSS subscribers, and referals (via other sites) too.

To get something similar with WordPress or BlogPress, I would have to purchase several other apps, respectively, not to mention constantly close out of the blog app in order to view my stats.

Multiple Image Selection

It’s not just the fact that I can select more than one image per post (as both BlogPress and the WordPress App do this), but rather I can select multiple images at once instead of individually.

This is a huge time saver, as it saves me precious minuets having to constantly reopen my photo library (which gets old after the fifth image).

What I Didn’t Love

There were a couple of things I did not like about this app, which the Squarespace team will hopefully remedy with the next update.

Landscape Fail

Unfortunately the Squarespace app only supports portrait mode for blogging, but not landscape mode, an issue my basketball fingers loathed (as they are too wide for the tiny keyboard).

Image Cap And Trade

You can only add up to 8 images per post. This is something that may not please photography guru’s, or people who like to use lots of images in their posts (like me).

Also I could only post images to the top of the blog post, which I found to be (humerously) irritating as the WordPress app does the same thing (except it places them at the bottom).

Conclusion

Overall, the Squarespace team did an excellent job with this app, and hopefully they will continue to add even more features as it could convince a few bloggers to switch over to their platform. (hint, hint)

All blog owners should not only improve their writing and research skills, they should also develop their internet marketing skills. They should learn how to market their blogs so that they can entice people to visit their blog and continue reading the posts they make. A properly marketed blog is also a great source of income. Imagine getting more money from the ads that you put in your blog? That’s a benefit I’d love to get from my blogs.

The problem is that internet marketing is a subject that intimidates a lot of people. Personally, I don’t think that this should be a source of fear. Internet marketing is not really that hard especially if you have the tools to help make things easier for you. For example, Twitter is quite easy to use. The popular microblogging platform is now widely used as an internet marketing tool. Its popularity makes it an obvious choice to implement marketing efforts because of the number of people that can be reached by the marketing message. Because of its effectiveness as a marketing tool, it’s also a natural progression that independent tools are developed to further mine the capabilities of Twitter.

Tweet Whistle is one of these tools that have unleashed the power of Twitter. Tweet Whistle is a marketing tool that allows you to market your blog in Twitter more easily by automating Twitter’s functions. With this application you can automatically target followers and even automate your Twitter posts. What’s more, Tweet Whistle is the most affordable Twitter marketing application you will find on the net. You can see for yourself how useful Tweet Whistle is by trying the trial demo, which you can download at http://www.tweetwhistle.com/.

But if you want the opportunity of using the full version of Tweet Whistle for free, you can join Tweet Whistle’s contest, wherein the winner will get a licensed copy of Tweet Whistle and a $25 cash prize to be paid through PayPal. To join the contest just do the following:
1.    Follow @thetoolsmith on Twitter

2.    Just tweet the message below:

Just enter to win $25.00 and a free copy of “Tweet Whistle” Just follow @thetoolsmith and Retweet http://tweetwhistle.com

It has me thinking though about blogging platforms. There are so many great options out there that I wonder how often people create their own anymore? Have we come to the point where one platform or another fulfills nearly every need, and those that program their own blog software do so only to prove that they can or are people still programming their own blogging platform because there is something missing from a feature or workflow standpoint?

I have thought about programming my own blogging software, but that is only because I don’t need something very complex, and so it would be easy to write, and would allow me to learn more about programming, and not because I am necessarily missing anything by using WordPress.

If you’ve thought about, or taken on the task of making your own blogging software, let me know why in the comments below.

The first was my own attempt at writing a free college software guide on College Crunch which then was noticed by Online College which built upon the list, adding more things that students (but really anyone) could and should use.

Then, I found another great post, on noupe, one of the blogs I frequent, relating to Mac Applications for Web Designers, and so the question then is, what do you all use as a blogger? I don’t just mean blogging software, but Twitter applications, day to day software. What is installed on your computer that you rarely go a day without launching? Let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to mention which operating system you use, and please no OS snobs.

TypePad Connect lets you style your comments so that it will look the same way with the rest of your blog. It also features a Gravatar-like profile picture system. Apparently TypePad Connect is a way for Six Apart to create a service that helps bloggers connect with their readers and other bloggers, in a more open, more powerful, and more meaningful fashion.

Typepad Connect is also integrated with the new TypePad Profiles. TypePad Profiles takes advantage of things you’re already doing and automatically updates itself, to keep your profile up to date and interesting. So if you have your Twitter synced to your profile, your status will be updated to reflect your current Twitter update. And finally, feeds, Microformats, and Open ID is also supported by TypePad Profiles.

These new profiles and comments are not just available for TypePad bloggers but for ANY blogger or web site for free. TypePad Connect is available for all of the major blog platforms. That means if you’re on TypePad, Moveable Type, WordPress, Tumblr, or Blogger, you would be able to use this new service without paying a thing.

What do you think about this new service? Drop your thoughts in the comments.

Of course, a blog can’t replace a full-time writing gig, but it’s a start. A pretty good start, if you ask me, because those who try this program out get the following:

• A free TypePad Pro account worth $14.95 per month. This is the service that powers big-name media blogs. Professional technical support is even included.
• Enrollment in the Six Apart Media advertising program, ads “that pay a lot more than simple Google text ads.”
• Promotion on Blogs.com, to jumpstart traffic, and a very effective way for those in the Journalist Bailout Program to cross-promote their sites.

The only thing journalists need to do to avail of this program is to send Six Apart the link to their last piece for a newspaper, magazine or broadcast journalism venue to bailout@sixapart.com. They say that this program might end soon, but there’s no word yet on a definite date, and response to the program has been overwhelming.

 If they do want to get journalists to start blogging, this is a great start. Offering not only a free blogging platform, but also an advertising program to be able to profit from the blog is a brilliant PR move.

For WordPress.org Mullenweg reports that as of today there are over 2.6 million active user-installed blogs “out there”.  

Matt Asay of CNet.com aptly puts “a better word” out… open source is and will be good business.  Unique page impressions are critical data for a lot of industries.  You’ve got a site/service you’d want advertised online (?) the first thing you ask is “How many unique page visitors does your site attract?” 

Here’s a quick run-thru of WordPress milestones:

• Page views grew from 1.5 billion to 6.5 billion/month
• 1/3 of the page views come from VIPs like CNN and LOLCats
• 120-160 million global unique visitors per month
• Two million new blogs created for the year
• 35 million new blog posts (up from 20 million)

Now regarding how the minor versions run-up to the big 2.7 version?  Mullenweg says that it will be a slow yet steady work on releasing easier update/upgrade paths.  

Mullenweg mentioned Microsoft, OSX, iPhone, Facebook platform as examples, and believes that good platforms need good self-updating systems. Automattic has a three-prong strategy for better updates: better community awareness, working with webhosts, and adding automatic upgrades functionality to WordPress. Mullenweg envisions the upgrade process to work just like Firefox: one-click, with a list of plugin and theme incompatibilities generated. 

 

Details from ReadWriteWeb say:

SUP, the Russian company that recently acquired LiveJournal, angered a substantial number of its users last week by instituting the policy before discussing it publicly and going against the advice of at least two members of the company’s new high profile advisory committee.

LJ’s pricing structure has long been unique among major social networks; none of its competitors allow users to avoid ads or pay for an ad-free and feature-rich account. It appears that the company has given up on that unique approach and chosen the ubiquitous ad-centric path to monetization, itself of questionable effectiveness in monetizing some social networking platforms.

Am I surprised that they had to go this route? Not really, as blogging software like LiveJournal is expensive to maintain, service, and update, and the staff deserves decent compensation for their work. I think they would have been better off taking a page from TypePad and WordPress.com by instituting more paid options rather than taking in more ad-supported methods to generating revenue.

What will happen to LiveJournal as it heads down this road? Will accounts already using the free with no ads version be grandfathered, or will they be exposed to ads?

If you are a LiveJournal user, please chime in, as I’d love to hear what you think of these recent developments.

The strange part of this story to most people though is who they sold it to: a Russion group, SUP. So far, the terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

It looks as though SUP bought the license to operate LiveJournal in Russia in October of 2006, where the Russian community is second only to the U.S. in number of accounts.

Over on GigaOm there are details from Edward Shenderovich, Head of Strategic Development at SUP, on why they purchased LiveJournal. Here is the response they got:

We believe it’s a good business. In the world now dominated by social networks, the role of a “community platform” holds a very special place. We have some ideas about new functionality, new partnerships, and some interesting monetization opportunities. We are very excited about the progress we had made in Russia in the last 6 months and look forward to replicate some of our success worldwide.

I wonder what this will mean for LiveJournal, and SixApart, as they go their separate ways, and what users will think of yet another company taking over providing their service?

Something that you need to know about the add-on though is that it costs extra money. The Multiple Site Manager will set you back $199.95 for a commercial license and $79.95 for a non-commercial license and enables you to manage 3 sites. Adding additional sites can be purchased on a per-instance basis for $49.95 (commercial license) and $24.95 (personal license).

Veerle, whom I am a huge fan of, has written a post on the new version, and seems rather excited about the whole thing. Coming from the free and open source arena of things, I am a little underwhelmed at this point. I know Expression Engine is great, I just don’t see how the price is justified for personal projects.

If you’re a TypePad blogger, we know you’re serious about making a great blog. But what about the parts of your site that don’t fit into your blog? A detailed contact page listing all the ways someone can get in touch. What about a biography that explains just how you became such an expert on the topic you blog about? Or, maybe your business’s blog needs a good set of directions to your office, along with a map. A couple extra pages on your site would add a lot of power and flexibility to your blog.

With the new TypePad Pages, you can use all the power of TypePad’s posting tools to create as many individual web pages as you want.

Interesting since all the features TypePad has added have been part of WordPress for a while now. Probably why Matt was smiling wide when he published a link to the new updates.

My first impression of the screenshots is that it is very minimalistic and shiney. You might like that, you might not.

SimpleLog is great, but it is intentionally missing some of the features common to blogging tools. So, before we get in too deep, I figured it’s only fair to address those ahead of time. SimpleLog is doesn’t allow for multiple blogs, formalized publishing workflow, or different privileges for different users. It simply focuses on writing and managing content.
A screenshot of the theme drop down in the SimpleLog preferences.Figure 2 Changing themes in SimpleLog is done by simply changing a value in a drop down.

One major aspect worth addressing is that SimpleLog doesn’t have a built-in templating system. To some, this is great because SimpleLog doesn’t reinvent the wheel. Instead, assuming that you’re comfortable with Ruby and Rails, you can create a theme by simply editing a small set of rhtml files. If you’re not comfortable with Rails, the files are still very editable and extremely readable and well-documented. However, having a good understanding of Ruby and Rails enables you to go much farther in customizing the code.

If you’re not interested in getting into the code, SimpleLog employs a fantastically simple system for themes. (Figure 2) Given it’s relative youth, you won’t find a plethora of themes out there, but once they exist, it’s a matter of copying a theme directory into the themes folder, and changing a drop down in the preferences setting.

If you are into Rails, and have a host that supports it, then check out SimpleLog, and of course Garrett’s article on the software.

Two important changes include:

• Web-based installer: added web-based installer that checks run-time requirements and that supports pre-made install profiles or distributions with better support for database table prefixes. It is also localizable.
• Core theme: introduced a new default core theme, called Garland (and a fixed width version Minnelli). Garland uses the new color module to change the theme’s entire color scheme on the fly.

Garland has received much attention since people were able to get their first sneak peak of it. It actually found its way to WordPress.com quickly after Drupal mentioned its intentions to include it as their new default theme. Let’s just say the Drupal folks were not happy. You can still find articles referencing the craziness over their great new theme if you do some searching.

Check out Drupal 5.0, you might just be surprised at how far it has come.

I think all blog software should make dynamic titles easier.