Professional Blog Software Reviews - DotClear

Following the recent TextPattern review, I’d like to tell you of another blog solution, Dotclear.

First, I do not develop Dotclear, I simply use it, for two years now. Dotclear is a French blog solution. Like most blog software, it is open source and MySQL/PHP-based, with plans for PostGreSQL support for version 2.

As you certainly know it, France has the second most important blog community in the world. And Dotclear is very widely used in the country of Moliere (and stinking cheeses). Recently, one of France’s major newspapers, Libération, came on strike and they used Dotclear as a software to relate what is going on. Other notable (and more international) Dotclear users include Mozilla Europe president, Tristan Nitot (standblog.org) or Nvu lead programmer, Daniel Glazman (glazman.org)

So, I said it is a French solution. I did not say it is a French-only blogging solution. Quite the contrary: the whole engine is in English, with a mandatory French translation. So, basically, language is not a problem. Granted, as most users speak French, it may be difficult to find extra documentation, particularly when it comes to plug-ins. But plug-ins themselves are always available in English.

Apart from the fact that all Dotclear developers and most users routinely speak English (who doesn’t?), an English website is available, as well as an English-speaking forum. It seems Germans are particularly interested in Dotclear (a German localisation is already available). Not being a German speaker myself, I can’t elaborate more on this. Finally, a localisation mailing list is also available and there is also a Spanish unofficial website. But let’s move on to tech specs…

First, one has to know the goals of Dotclear: to make a simple blog software, as unbloated as possible and delegating every possible things to plugins. To make a parallel with forum software: Dotclear is to heavy blog software (no name please) what punBB is to phpBB (or others). Lightweight. dot-CLEAR. Below, I will use the same categorization as for the previous TextPattern Review.

Installation

It may be one of the easiest I ever found for a Web app (well, this very privilege actually goes to a Dotclear-inspired CMS called Plume, but Dotclear is a very close second). Nothing to say about this, you should have no problem, provided you properly filled the fields. Notice that Dotclear allows both latin-1 (for Westerners) and UTF-8 (for everyone but Klingons)

Usability

I would have a hard time being objective there. Let’s say I’m very demanding and found Dotclear both straightforward and powerful. I’m not a coder but I heard the code is object-oriented and cleanly done.

It is possible to write either in wiki of in HTML. It is also possible to use both at once or to convert wiki to HTML. Code validates, of course.

Comments

There is no tools for moderation. This is on purpose, as it should be handled by a plugin. I don’t know of any, but I did not search for, either. Wiki syntax is available for comments too

Search

Nothing special there. It is there and works. As usual, advanced searching functionnalities are available via a plugin (namely, Advanced Search)

Ping and trackback

Pingback is not available. Trackback works perfectly, but I never been able to trackback TypePad. Notice Dotclear is able to autodiscover trackbacks, even into cite attributes (q cite or blockquote cite)

URI

There are several options to create URI but you can’t choose your very own way. Notice that, once you published an article, you can change the “semantic” part of it with no hassle. Even though someone links to you article by used an old naming, it would still work.

SE Friendly

Yep, definitely. As a default, Dotclear incorporates some Dublin Core metadatas and an additional metadata plugin is also available

Templates

In accordance with its lightweight focus, Dotclear comes bundled with only one template (W3-valid and all), but would you need a new one, template creation is fully documentated.

When it comes to themes, two are availables as default (the original one and the new one, which is default). A lot more are available too, like the Firefox 1.5 theme, specifically created for the release of the latest version of the Red Panda and that you can see live at Mozilla-Europe’s president’s blog, standblog.org.

Installing new themes is very easy, thanks to the wonderful ">packaging system. More on this later.

Categories

By default, Dotclear handles neither multi-categories or sub-categories, but all of this can be fixed with plugins (multi-cat, the sub-cat plugin is on its way). Notice the very nice JavaScript for easily reordering categories in the admin interface, (quite handy, when, like me, you have a score of categories)

Static pages

Once again, this is perfectly possible, with a plugin, Related.

API

Sorry, nothing in that corner.

Stats

No stat, but… Yep you got it, a plugin, called BBClone (and BBClone for RSS)

Multi Author

Native

Support

As mentioned previously, a forum and mailing list are available, as well as a bug/devel-tracking software.

Others

• Permalinks with semantic URI, good for search engine (use the inurl:/allinurl: Google commands)
• Atom 0.3 and RSS 1.0 feeds
• Article and comment feeds, as well as this-post-only comments feeds
• HTTP caching (deactivable)
• language sorting: for instance, my very own blog contains articles in French, English and Slovene

One more thing… Packages

This is maybe the best Dotclear feature: both themes and plugins are packaged in a .pkg format (OS X users beware, they are not OS X will falsely recognize them as Apple packages).
The idea behind packages is very simple:

• Go to the admin interface, “tools” tab, and select the “plugin managers” tool (or, for theme, the “themes manager”)
• In the one-line field, just enter the URI (ending with a .pkg) of the plugin/theme you want ton install
• Validate
• If you are installing a theme, click on the approriate use this theme. If you are installing an plugin, click on back to tools, then select your plugin that now appears on the list.

Could it get any better? If you prefer a more traditionnal approach, zip versions are always available.

Conclusion

As you can see, Dotclear is intented to let you have a customised, no-bloat, simple-but-not-simplistic blog solution. Every non-essential feature is available as a plugin. Very easy to set-up and maintain, it is definitely worth a look. Add to this the idiot-proof packaging system which lets you forget about FTP and you have a simple, yet powerful solution.