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Recommend Blog Software (sorta)


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I am setting up my family's history site and will be having multiple users add content to it. Content will be photos, stories, family tree data (ged format probably), and whatever else they want to put in. I would prefer PHP for the platform and as low cost (if not free), as possible.

Having taken a short poll - family would love to be able to blog from an application on their computer instead of having to log in to the site to make things easier. (NOT A DEAL BREAKER THOUGH if this isn't possible).

Most users are computer literate, but a few have problems navigating CMS systems as a whole so I want it to be as simple for them as possible in a WYSIWYG blogging environment.

I have toyed with Wordpress, but frankly - not a huge fan of the every other week it seems or more often updates that happen a lot. Not to mention, have trained several people in past in the use of WordPress and while they grasp it fairly well, it just isn't an easy thing it seems.

I develop in Joomla and while this will do everything I want (except for desktop blogging with their newest version of Joomla), users can find it to be a steep learning curve.

I have played with Serendipity and that looks promising, but it didn't render text well - did a copy/paste from email and it didn't justify correctly. Whereas other systems did fine.

I know there a hundreds of options so just wanted to see if you had recommendations or software you might have used with your client(s) in the past that is not only super flexible for developing but also easy as knowing their ABC's for them.

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You could try Squarespace. They give you both the hosting and the domain. Plus, they have the WYSIWYG editor for those that are "computer illiterate", but if you know your stuff, you can go ahead and mess with the code.

As for blogging software, I've been using Windows Live Writer which works pretty well.

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