a place for whoever happens to stop by to post their thoughts ...

April 24, 2001 3:49 PM

i was thinking of a team type weblog ... not really a metafilter type thing ... and not quite just a discussion board. but more like a place for whoever happens to stop by to post their thoughts ... (more>)

posted by a11an to General Weblog-Related at 3:49 PM (12 comments total)

A11an's posting some long, well-thought-out concept, but I've snuck in here to taint his thread. First post!
posted by anildash at 3:56 PM on April 24, 2001

...first off ... blast you anildash! for posting before i finish.. hehe ...

my first inclination was to work off of blogger, which has proven to be the best free publishing weblog software, but it requires an 'invite' for people to start posting .. then there was pitas (another blog tool) but that makes it too easy for lamers to change the pass and take over the site ...

... any ideas on free services of this sort?
i note free because as always im just a HS student and still lacking funds and parental permission to open ye ol' wallet



posted by a11an at 3:58 PM on April 24, 2001

well, a11an, there's no perfect free service for what you want to do. You'd most likely have to learn a programming language, then create your own system.

that would require a host somewhere that lets you run sites built with a programming language, and I don't think there are any at all.

evolt.org was offering free space at members.evolt.org for coldfusion accounts but I think they've closed it up.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:17 PM on April 24, 2001

a11an, Userland's Manila is a great tool for creating a mini-community. You can have a discussion board and you can control who gets contributing or managing editor powers (to, say, post to the front page). It's far from perfect but it's a great way to get started without much besides some HTML template tweaking.

Check out my (neglected) Keys to the White House community (about an esoteric prediction system for elections), or the top Userland-hosted site, MattyG's TV and Movie Themes. Huge traffic on the boards, and no front-page posts since November.

I'm actually intending to move my Manila site over to (probably) PHP Nuke -- a system where I'd have control over the innards -- by summer. But that requires a hosting account, so it's not really free, even though the software costs nothing. But if you're willing to learn PHP or a CMS like Zope/Squishdot (which clones the Slashdot software), you can really do a lot more. Are you that ambitious?
posted by dhartung at 5:11 PM on April 24, 2001

There are at least three collaborative web pages I follow which, though not open for posts by anyone at all, are the work of a group of people rather than one person. The three I follow are CrackerJap, WankerCountry, and HissyFit. It actually took me a while to realize that all the contributers to WankerCountry were in high school! Bunch of bright kids there.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 7:07 PM on April 24, 2001

A couple friends and I are thinking of starting an "argument" blog - which we haven't fleshed out yet, but will probably eschew some of the politeness we have here on mefi.

(I have to get my rage out somehow :)

Interested mefiers can drop me a line.
posted by owillis at 9:13 PM on April 24, 2001

I've got an experiment going very similar to what you've described, a11an. It's a weblog stored in XML that's open for anyone to post. Check it out, and let me know what you think.
posted by Neb at 12:56 AM on April 25, 2001

owillis, that reminds me of the Monty Python argument sketch.


posted by gimli at 7:03 AM on April 25, 2001

No it doesn't.
posted by dhartung at 3:23 PM on April 25, 2001

One already exists...
posted by fooljay at 8:44 PM on April 25, 2001

Looking for "collaborative blogs"? Try cruising around the E/N universe for any appreciable length of time. There are hundreds upon hundreds of said sites, pretty much all of which have a "staff" of multiple contributors.

posted by youhas at 12:50 PM on April 26, 2001

a11an, I may know what you're looking for...
posted by Lirp at 7:13 PM on May 1, 2001