Blogs for Academia

June 30, 2004 2:29 AM

I'm looking for a weblogging system for an academic course. Unfortunately, MT and Blogger don't seem to meet my needs: it has to have multiple users, user groups, and posts need to have access control (certain posts can only be read by certain groups). LiveJournal offers this, but I don't want to have to set up an entire LJ server. Is there some kind of middle ground?
posted by bwerdmuller to Education (9 answers total)

Try Expression Engine, sounds just like what you need.
posted by madmanz123 at 4:12 AM on June 30, 2004

B2Evolution has almost everything anyone could ever need in a blogging system. It should be able to do what you need (you'll need mysql and php on your server, though).
posted by humuhumu at 4:49 AM on June 30, 2004

Can you not use phpBB? I know it's not really a weblogging system but it does have all the features you ask for.
posted by ralawrence at 6:16 AM on June 30, 2004

Some community CMSs support blogging. The one I'm best acquainted with, Drupal has a blog module with role-based permission control in the basic install. There's also a "groups" add-on module that gives you a different angle on permissions.
posted by adamrice at 7:44 AM on June 30, 2004

Drupal is a nightmare to customize.... I have no personal experience with it, but my husband has use Moodle quite a bit and set it up for a college; they're delighted with it. It may be more than you need but it is an online course management tool that has blogs, groups, wikis, access levels and discussion moderation (plus tons of other ed. features).
posted by mimi at 9:59 AM on June 30, 2004

If you know PHP, I'm having a jolly good time hack-hack-hacking away at Wordpress to do something similar.
posted by gramcracker at 10:04 AM on June 30, 2004

I've used Phorum for some communities. It can be put up to look like a blog, and it has all the features you wanted.
posted by hoskala at 10:10 AM on June 30, 2004

I'm going to second the recommendation for Moodle. It's great!
posted by litlnemo at 10:48 AM on June 30, 2004

How about ‘phase’?
posted by snarfodox at 1:47 PM on June 30, 2004