I've been using Bitakora (this blog software) for a while now and I'm fairly happy with it. It doesn't have a lot of features, but I chose it because it seemed to have a promising future.

Well, that future seems to be slipping away. There's been zero updates since I first installed it and the mailing list echoes with the sounds of unanswered emails.

This is pretty sad, because there is a dearth of blogs written in Python. If Bitakora were written in pure Python or perhaps a modern framework like TurboGears, Django, Pylons, etc, then I might be willing to start hacking on it. Unfortunately Bitakora is written in Zope and I have no plans on reading 400 pages of documentation so I can add a captcha to cut down on the spam this blog has started seeing lately.

I've been reading Lee McFadden's SimpleBlog tutorial (mostly to understand SQLAlchemy and how to tie it in to TurboGears) and now I'm thinking about writing my own damn blog based on this tutorial (using TurboStan, of course, rather than Kid or Genshi). Even if it doesn't have every bell and whistle under the sun, at least I'll understand the code and it'll have the bells and whistles I want, which is of course, what's really important.

Anyway, goodbye Bitakora, I barely knew thee.

Okay, I've managed to move most of the important articles over and spent some time getting things working.

Here's what Bitakora has:

1. Great multiuser support
2. Clean and simple admin interface

Here's what it needs:

1. Split articles (read more...)
2. Spam prevention
3. More configuration options (I had to hack dhtml and py files to cut the number of articles per page down to 5 from 10).
4. RSS feeds by tag

After much pain and suffering (as only Zope can inflict), Bitakora is running and it's lookin' grood!

Okay, maybe it doesn't. But I do. Fed up with Bitakora, I cracked down and started a blog from scratch (well, building on Splee's SimpleBlog tutorial - mostly for the SQLAlchemy tips).

What you see here is the first basic incarnation of it. It's built using Pylons, Breve and SQLAlchemy. Not that it's required, but it also happens to have PostgreSQL living underneath of it.

This is also my second small Pylons application (the first being the Breve site). This also makes it the second live Breve site in existence (that I'm aware of). This is actually much of the reason I'm doing it: I need to learn Pylons and I need to test Breve on real applications (I'm already seeing features that would make life a bit simpler).

Anyway, I've got a lot to do but my basic goals are as follows:

1. Very basic blog core - no Javascript. No web 2.0. Nothing but posts, comments and tags (and a few themes).
2. Plugins (for adding all the stuff explicitly excluded in #1).
3. One-off pages (e.g. "About", "My Projects")
4. Admin interface.
5. Multiuser

Of these, #1 is around 90% finished. #2 is in exploratory testing. #3 will take all of an hour. #4 and #5 are pipe-dreams for now.

Some of the first plugins I have in mind are:

1. Threaded comment system.
2. Gallery

Oh, and as you can see, the blog is named "Pentropy". I'll have a site/trac/svn up for it soonish.

I decided I would write a quick Python script to move old articles from my ex-ex-ex blog into this one. Turned out to be not too quick.

Anyway, I still need to reformat the comments, but the articles are all there in their fabulous glory.