Geeklog Review - A look at the Open Source CMS, Geeklog
Geeklog is somewhat of a combination between blog and cms and more or less would fall under the category of a news publishing platform in my opinion. Let's examine Geeklogs' latest edition in this Geeklog Review and see what kind of changes have been made to make it more simplified.
Geeklog was originally created to run the Securitygeeks and Newsgeeks websites but was released into the wonderful world of opensource under the GPL license.
Geeklog has been around for quite some time, while it used to be notoriously difficult to install.. this new release promises some changes to make it better.
To kick off the install, you need to upload the public_html folder found in the geeklog archive that you download from their website. You then navigate to http://yourdomain.com/admin/install/index.html to begin the install process.
You should be greeted with a screen such as the one below:
Once you choose your path (choose it wisely!) you will get the following screen to fill out with your configuration info:
after filling out this you will get this screen identifying that you are done! Wow. That was fast!
Talk about a quick install. Let's check out what we end up with for a system..
Once you login you are greeted with the geeklog control center. It's very basic and you have to keep in mind that the sole purpose of this software is a blog. Personally, I think it could use some work.. especially if they want to compare with some of the larger more refined systems out there.
The initial site is quite basic. Changing themes is far too difficult and involves editing the config files directly. There really aren't a lot of options in the control panel to make life easier for the end user.
Overall, this is just a quick review.. There's not much to say about geeklog. For the people who use it, it works well.. personally, it's not for me. I will say that it's much further ahead than it was now that it is easier to install.. but it's definitely not on par with where it should be to compete. Let's take a look at the ratings (keep in mind I did this review fairly quickly due to the lack of options geeklog has, there wasn't much to review).
Overall, my ratings are:
Community 7/10 (Geeklog has a great community, I'll give them that)
Expandability 5/10 (Needs more modules to compete with larger systems)
Themability 6/10 (Definitely needs more themes in order to be more appealing to broader audience)
Useability 6/10 (Tough for beginners, Recommended for advanced users only)