New to MT

December 19, 2006 4:44 AM

I want a private, metafilter-like blog for a group of friends. So I installed MT. Works great, but the default install isn't the best for people who are not great with computers. All I want is for "post" to be at the top of the displayed blog and it should only allow authorized users to post. How can I do this?

I already have access control set up through ssl. I'm also willing to switch blog software if there is a better package somewhere for this. It seems like MT is meant for those with many readers and few authors. I need something where all readers are authors. Thanks for your help.

posted by about_time to computers & internet (11 comments total)

Why not just switch over to WP or Blogger? They're both easier than MT.
posted by Tuffy at 5:04 AM on December 19, 2006

http://sourceforge.net/projects/php-mefi/
posted by SirStan at 5:07 AM on December 19, 2006

The php-mefi link doesn't work --- project deleted?
posted by about_time at 5:16 AM on December 19, 2006

Also, I should add that I want to host it in my own server.
posted by about_time at 5:37 AM on December 19, 2006

WP seems to be what i want. Thanks!
posted by about_time at 5:59 AM on December 19, 2006

My darling girlfriend and her buddies use Blogger. I was not aware till she looked it up but you can host the resulting blog on your own server. Simple to use and since the result is static HTML it's WAY easy to back up.
posted by phearlez at 7:54 AM on December 19, 2006

I think you might be better off with some sort of bulletin board system, like PHPBB.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 11:15 AM on December 19, 2006

Don't count out Drupal. It has both blogging, forums and user photo galleries and a thousand other pluggable modules.
posted by camworld at 11:59 AM on December 19, 2006

I would recommend forum software instead of a blog. There are two VERY simple, VERY user friendly forums that your friends would do good with:

http://bbpress.org/ - BBPress is from the makers of WordPress.

http://getvanilla.com/ - Vanilla is a similar, web2.0-ish forum setup.

Forums are made for discussion! Blogs/comments are ok, but why sacrifice functionality when it comes in such a simple package, like the two above? :)
posted by PandemicSoul at 1:20 PM on December 19, 2006

The following forum software is free, and the resulting forum is about as simple and intuitive as they get:

http://www.johnsadventures.com/backend/DiscussionForum/index.html
posted by jayder at 9:59 PM on December 19, 2006

Google Groups has kept my high school and college buddies together after we've moved apart.

No downloading needed. Set it to invitation-only.

And there ya go!
posted by blastrid at 3:25 PM on December 20, 2006