Mostly Harmless

I’m currently fiddling around with Lyceum and Wordpress MU in an attempt to decide which is most suitable for a little community site I want to get going.

Installing MU is as simple as uploading the file base to the web root (or other location of your choice) and then  visiting the site. Pop in your database details and off you go. You must choose at installation time whether to use subdomains or directories for your site - the language implies this cannot be changed later.

Cosmetically, MU looks an awful lot like Wordpress (yes I know it IS Wordpress but I’m sure you know what I mean!) both on the front page and in the admin area, whereas Lyceum has a customised front page and admin area.  Given that you’ll probably customise a fair bit this doesn’t matter overmuch, but there is a certain logic to the MU setup of having the admin bits and bobs within a tab in the familiar Wordpress admin area.

Whereas at the Lyceum site I found things easy to locate at a glance the MU site doesn’t seem to link very visibly to  http://wpmudev.org/ which seems to be quite an indispensable resource for plugins and themes, even if a lot of contributors seem to have difficulty updating their contribution pages with the new releases. After ten minutes of browsing I’d already added the per user upload quota plugin which is an absolute must have for my site. I’m sure there is a good reason there isn’t a flipping great link on the main site of course The site may even have been superseded for all I know.

It’s going to be quite interesting working out which of the systems will do what I want with the least work - a hard bit is definitely going to be deciding which database setup is better. I’ll blog along as I come up against interesting differences and issues.

Rowan :: May.02.2007 :: Lyceum, Web Apps, Wordpress MU :: No Comments »

I tried installing Lyceum a few months back but couldn’t get it working right. Decided this evening to give the latest version (0.34) a whirl and I’m pleased to report it installs smoothly. Simply point the webroot at src/lyceum, pop the database info in the config file and go through the installation wizard and you’re done.

Now that’s complete you have a working system that lets you easily run a blogging community. Creating a new blog is as simple as filling in a registration form and checking your email for the password. There is also a plugin to hook up with LDAP - which must be very exciting if you’re into that sort of thing

It’s interesting that whilst Wordpress has it’s own multi user version in Wordpress MU (used on wordpress.org) that even has a supported Enterprise version someone has felt it necessary to provide an alternative solution with a substantially altered structure. Lyceum has a FAQ entry on the differences.

I’ll be giving installing MU a go tomorrow and then fiddling with er… appraising each system to see which is best for my purposes.

Rowan :: Apr.30.2007 :: Lyceum, Web Apps :: 1 Comment »