Finding information on BlogSphere

Today, I wanted to dive deeper into BlogSphere, to see if I could adapt it to fit my needs for this blog. So I looked around for information:

• BlogSphere can be downloaded from www.openntf.org. The current version is V3.0. The project owner is Declan Lynch.
• There is a Wikipedia entry on Blogsphere.
• There is also a BlogSphere Wiki which gives a good introduction, but does not cover the latest version.
• The main sources for the latest information on BlogSphere are
  www.blogsphere.net and the blog of Declan Lynch himself.

Unfortunately, the server of www.blogsphere.net and Declan's blog is down for several days now. I hope it will revive soon.

Finding skins for BlogSphere

I found out that BlogSphere uses the same HTML structure and CSS classes as another well known blog publishing platform: Movable Type. How to import a Movable Type skin and where to find these can be found on Captain Oblivious: 'Importing a New Skin into BlogSphere V3'. The default skin that comes with BlogSphere, Vicksburg, is a Movable Type skin. Vicksburg exists a number of color variations.

When importing a Movable Type skin, I noticed that special blocks like the Calendar are not skinned because their classNames are different. I have the feeling however that it would take just a small effort to make a Movable Type to BlogSphere skin converter.

Creating a new skin for BlogSphere

Most of us bloggers will evidently want to create our own skin. Going along with Movable Type was a superb move indeed: there is an very nice online
Movable Type Style Generator that will help you a lot.

Comparing BlogSphere with the IBM Blog template

After setting up a second test blog with the blog template that ships with the Domino 7 server, it didn't take me long to select the winner. For me, and I take that as a very personal judgement, it clearly is BlogSphere:

• Both are easy to set up (good), use the same techniques (WebQueryOpen) and contain about a hundred views (bad!!) to help doing the task.
• The setup document in IBM Blog has lots of tabs and fields to fill in, and on top of that, it recalculates all formulas each time you change field. This makes configuring a blog like wading through mud. Especially when you are still trying to find your way, this is very annoying.
• The configuration of BlogSphere, at least for me, is more intuitive than the IBM blog.
• BlogSphere fits better in the blogosphere: compatible with Movable Type, etc.
• IBM blog uses base href and relative paths like ../../blabla.css all the time. My experience has learned that this is not very safe. Good habit is: define all your paths starting from the site root.

What next?

Both BlogSphere and the IBM Blog template use the same remarkable technique: they have almost empty forms, just a rich text field and a bunch of CGI variables. All the HTML rendering is done on the fly with QueryOpen agents. Is this a new trend? Should we consider going in that direction for all web development with Domino? I'll get back on this in my next post.