Free, multi-user, community website

December 20, 2005 9:48 AM

Looking to start a tiny, tiny, tiny version of MeFi (not really). Just a blog or community website that allows for multiple posters...

Here's the rub. It should be free. I want to be able to add users myself without requiring those users to do anything but get an email from me with their usernames and passwords, and log in. Trying to get the Famn Damily (in all their technological skittishness) on the same page. There would be about 15 posters, max. WordPress seemed to do the trick, but it looks like all of the family would have to sign up themselves, and then join the main page. This will, unfortunately, never happen if I don't do it myself. Is this possible?

posted by provocateur to computers & internet (20 comments total)

Can you code in Perl? I hacked a version of FreeFilter http://www.bigbold.com/freefilter/ to do just that for my family. If you don't mind not-logged-in users reading, you won't even have to hack it.
posted by bonaldi at 9:55 AM on December 20, 2005

Why don't you add them yourself? You already said earlier on you want to add users yourself.. so why not go into WordPress and add and set up the users manually?
posted by wackybrit at 9:56 AM on December 20, 2005

FWIW, I was the developer of FreeFilter, and do not advise anyone except the extremely curious and technically deft try to use it anymore. :) Of course, there are a lot of curious folks out there.. and it does the job.

There's also the other open source MeFi clone which MonkeyFilter runs, but I forget the name of it.
posted by wackybrit at 9:59 AM on December 20, 2005

Wackybrit is right—just add their account and respective permissions in WordPress. Explain to them that they each have their own output page as well.
posted by disillusioned at 10:04 AM on December 20, 2005

I use Movable Type 2.661 to run a group blog with 16 members, which all works fine - any version higher requires you to pay for that many members.
posted by Orange Goblin at 10:06 AM on December 20, 2005

How would one modify MT to allow this? I want to set up a multi-blog site where one of the streams would allow anyone to post an article that would be held for approval, and then allow comments by anyone after approval. ANy ideas on how to do this?
posted by luriete at 10:07 AM on December 20, 2005

(or maybe I just need a new post for that question alone, sorry)
posted by luriete at 10:07 AM on December 20, 2005

No perl coding for me, bonaldi. And I cant figure out how to add users in wordpress if they are not already wordpress members, wacky. To become members, there's the whole bizarre (xf49pqr) password sent to their email addresses before they can change it to something they feel comfortable with, and, to put it bluntly, none of them can be trusted not to throw their hands up in the air and go "this internet stuff, i just dont get it."

On Preview: Am i missing something disillusioned? can i add them without inputting their email addresses?
posted by provocateur at 10:08 AM on December 20, 2005

Phpilfer written by our own awesome holloway, is a purty badass mefi clone, or so i hear.
posted by fishfucker at 10:13 AM on December 20, 2005

luriete: I'm pretty sure I've read about people doing that in MT. Either you have it so only save their posts in draft form before being approved, or there is a plugin, I can't remember. Tho if by "anyone" you mean unregistered users, I don't think MT can do that.
posted by Orange Goblin at 10:25 AM on December 20, 2005

Yes, I mean unregistered users. I want anyone to be able to submit a draft, and once it's edited/approved, it shows up as a regular article on the site. It doesn't sound that weird, but maybe it's not possible to do. I just figured with all the extensibility of MT that it could be done.

Barring that, I'm going to try to figure out a super easy automated registration process or typekey-based submission process. Either would be great if anyone has pointers, but I don't want to hijack this thread.
posted by luriete at 10:33 AM on December 20, 2005

we can share, luriete...
posted by provocateur at 10:35 AM on December 20, 2005

Maybe Vanilla? It's a very simple forum, easy to setup and not too heavy. You'll need php and MySQL.
posted by hooray at 10:55 AM on December 20, 2005

Drupal allows an adminstrator to manually create user accounts and set passwords. Then you can e-mail the user.

It's free open-source software that you can download and install on your own box, but I have a Drupal site hosted at SurfSpeedy, which at $3.95/mo is almost free. They are one of the ISPs offering use of "Fantastico," which lets you install Drupal and various other web applications on your site by simply picking them off a menu.

Drupal has a bit of a learning curve for the site administrator, but users should be able to post stories or blog entries easily enough.
posted by Tubes at 11:04 AM on December 20, 2005

Don't sell it short, wackybrit! The code was clean and easy to hack into what I wanted -- and worked so well that there's a meetup going on tonight. Your code prompted beers to be bought, which is high praise.
posted by bonaldi at 12:00 PM on December 20, 2005

b2evolution is used on metachat. And that's a metafilter style forum with approved membership & multiple posters. You should easily be able to enter new users by taking the technologically complicated step of "logging off and registering each new user yourself"
posted by seanyboy at 12:51 PM on December 20, 2005

There's also the other open source MeFi clone which MonkeyFilter runs, but I forget the name of it.

wackybrit is talking about Metaphilter, and like FreeFilter I wouldn't run it unless you're competent in PHP. And even then it's fine for small groups but I would never recommend it for anything in the medium to large scale -- it soaks up way too much of the CPU. I'd go for Wordpress or Drupal myself, for a small community blog.

Oh, and metachat looks and behaves great, so b2evolution is worth a look.
posted by tracicle at 1:14 PM on December 20, 2005

To manually add a user in Wordpress, go to the Users: Authors & Users admin page, and use the "Add User" form in the bottom half of the page. You will need to enter an e-mail address for the new user, but (unlike the registration form) the user will not receive a registration message.
posted by mbrubeck at 1:34 PM on December 20, 2005

What Tubes said.
I use drupal, and love it.
Tim Berners-Lee and Spread Firefox use it too.
posted by hypersloth at 2:13 AM on December 21, 2005

Orange Goblin, Provocateur, Movable Type can definitely do this and supports the admin creating multiple authors themselves, plus creating multiple blogs down the road, too, if you want. No reason to stick with the old version -- we'll help you get current with MT 3.2 if you want, and you can even get it bundled with web hosting for a few bucks a month. If you're considering MT, get in touch and I"ll be glad to help.
posted by anildash at 11:59 PM on December 21, 2005