[pm-h] blosxom (perl) and apache2

[Russell L. Harris]

* Jeremy Fluhmann <fluhmann at gmail.com> [080330 14:21]:
> I had started looking into using Blosxom a few months back for a personal blog,
> but ended up going with Movable Type (http://www.movabletype.com/, also written
> in Perl).  Not sure if there's a difference between MT 4.1 for personal use and
> MTOS (Movable Type Open Source - http://movabletype.org/opensource/).  I may
> still try to play around with Blosxom, though.

I finally found several blogs which currently run Blosxom, and one of
the Blosxom users I contacted suggested trying:

    http://localhost/cgi-bin/blosxom/

That worked; the cgi script ran and displayed the blog text.
Meanwhile, I found and read the official Apache tutorial, "Dynamic
Content with CGI".  So I think that I now should be able to configure
Apache2 to make the blog display, using a simple URL such as:

    http://localhost/blog


I would consider Movable Type Open Source, but what's to keep it from
going the way of WordPress (which still is open-source)?  

The problem is that the blog has become something of an art form -- a
mechanism for personal expression through visual presentation -- at
the expense of the utility which only the blog can provide.  Indeed,
the blog is becoming more of a status symbol than a means by which
knowledge and understanding are communicated.  That, plus the
phenomenon of "feature creep" has turned a tool for maintenance of a
personal, publicly-viewable bulletin board into a tool for production
of a personal web site.  But this growing complexity has a price.

The paramount and vital characteristic of the blog is economy with
respect to the time and effort of the blogger.  While WordPress
continues to offer a minimal burden with respect to publication effort,
the burden of maintenance appears to be growing rapidly, if not
exponentially.  I have little interest in a blogging package which
entails more than about one update a year.

Thus, two days ago, when I logged into the administrative page of my
WordPress blog and saw a message declaring that my version of
WordPress is out-of-date and that an upgrade is needed, and then read
over the page of instructions for making the update and the
accompanying warnings concerning features which might be broken by the
update, I knew immediately that it was time to regress to a simpler,
saner blogging engine.

RLH