Open Source Too Open for Me

March 15, 2006 11:40 AM

What type of open source software should I use to disseminate information I have collected over the years? I have a HUGE series of links on a topic that I would like to start sharing with friends and the net as a whole. I am having trouble deciding what to use to post it: CMS (like PHPNuke or Joomla), Wiki, Blog (like WordPress or MT), or just a bookmark manager (like SiteBar).

Right now I have SiteBar to share bookmarks between all the computers I use. It has about 2,000 links from personal to work -related.

As I use a small subset of them more and more, I felt it would be better to share them as a group. More specifically, I would like to share software and procedures I deem necessary or extraordinarily helpful in setting up and maintaining computers (I know there are others like it, but none please me 100%).

What I want is (in no order):
• Open source or free (as in beer) and actively developed.
• An easy way to post/update links. The popup posters for blogs and SiteBar are an example of easy post. I know HTML, so I can do it manually if necessary, but if I am going to be regularly updating it, I'd rather have an easier way.
• Some way to rate the links.
• A way to categorize these links in multiple ways, be it either tags or multi-category.
• The ability to also write articles/rants/diatribes
• Somewhat elegant without too much customization necessary. I am kind of turned off by some of the ones that do not consider CSS a vital feature. Times New Roman is not for me, if you know what I mean.
• Commenting would be nice.
• My host is running a VDS, so anything that runs on Linux is good. I would prefer PHP/MySQL, but Perl is OK too. Java is supported, but is also not preferred since I have never set it up.

Looking around, I have not been able to determine what meets my needs best. I realize that there may not one solution out there, but any suggestions and examples would be extraordinarily helpful.

posted by JLobster to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

How about delicious? Its web-based, but free. It looks like it has most every feature you are looking for.
posted by gus at 12:27 PM on March 15, 2006

Best answer: I would suggest using two programs. One a blog (aka CMS) like wordpress to manage new news and stories and what not. And two, a links directory type application. You could massage the two together to appear seamless.

I would look into Scuttle:

Web-based social bookmarking system. Allows multiple users to store, share and tag their favourite links online.

posted by maxpower at 12:52 PM on March 15, 2006

Why not use a document management tool like Knowledge Tree?

It's designed as a data repository for organizations, but it allows you to catalogue and sort documents of various types (including HTML but I'm not sure about CSS support) and provides a web front-end with user-level control and auditing.

It might be a bit of overkill, but it should be worth a look.
posted by WinnipegDragon at 12:53 PM on March 15, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks max, your general idea seems to be the way to go. Since I can't seem to find a way to import tags into Scuttle, however, I am going to stick with SiteBar and embed a subdirectory into the CMS/blogging system using these instructions.

Also, on your tip I found Pligg, which also did not meet my needs, but is still cool nonetheless.

PS-If someone knows how to get Scuttle to import tags/categories or at least change tags more than one link at a time, I would greatly appreciate it.
posted by JLobster at 9:09 AM on March 16, 2006