Programming

Need to Launch a Blog? Don’t run PHP? Check out SubText

Wyatt Barnett
Share

For reasons I cannot really get into, I am in the process of deploying a multi-user blogging package. Also included in this project are a bit of custom extension via the web services interfaces. And, for other reasons I shan’t get into at the moment, it cannot be a PHP/MySql package.

We actually ran into this selfsame problem a year back, but management eventually balked at blogging in general. At that time the only option was the venerable .TEXT engine. Which, at heart, is a very solid application but was also showing its age in many ways. Setup was archaic at best. And don’t even contemplate running it on a shared host. In the process of researching options for that project, I stumbled upon SubText. Now, at the time that project was in its infancy and did not have a release published. But now it is rocking and rolling. Hard.

What Is SubText?

SubText is a fork of the .TEXT engine. The major improvements in the current released version (1.5.2 at the time of this writing) include:

  1. Setup is disturbingly easy. And it could easily be managed on a shared host. By someone with very, very limited knowlege of managing a server.
  2. Stock templates are much, much cleaner. And much, much prettier. And work in non-IE browsers in general.
  3. Admin tool feels much, much better. The addition of Fck editor is a good one.
  4. Configuration and admin do not require command line tools and carnal knowledge of the server.
  5. MetaBlogAPI has been implemented, allowing it to work with all the neato blogger tools floating about. As well as easy, custom extension without futzing around with the core package.
  6. It is just a blog. Unlike some other packages you don’t get all manner of rather extraneous features if you just wanted to tell the wold about your expeiences with your belly-button lint on while sticking to the .NET platform.

In addition, SubText is a very active project. It’s Benevolent Dictator is no less than Phil Haack (who also has an instanely awsome SubText-powered blog). He is supported by a crack team of developers. And the team is marching towards the 1.90 release as I write. Furthermore, the dev team is very responsive. I posted a (mistaken) bug report to the SourceForge site and I had an email from Phil within minutes.

How can I get SubText?

Everything you need to get is at the SubText project SourceForge site. For more information about the project, check out the SubText project site.