We’ve now got photo galleries working with blog posts in Pulse 
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Oh lovely thanks for the update Michael 
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Hi everyone.
It is 2018 and things have changed (I hope).
There are new stacks and third party options.
Are you able to share your experience and offer advise on creating a blog today with rapidweaver.
Which stacks, themes or options have you found most useful and easy to use?
Thank you.
K
Total CMS is a really powerful blogging platform now… Its what I have been working on for 80% of my time for the past 2 years.
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Coming back to the OP question, Poster Stack is the answer.
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I use Joe Workman’s Total CMS to run my blog as a ‘Latest News’ page on my site www.rafars.org and I also use it to show items for sale to members. It’s a piece of cake to setup within Rapidweaver and to manage from any web browser.
A lot has changed (sadly not with RW blog functionality) and there are many offerings.
Some stacks are really a conduit for a CMS and much of the work and posting is not done in RW, but on the server; apart from setting up the CMS stack in RW. Are those building a site using stacks? Strictly no, but broadly yes! This kind of muddies the water about, “creating a blog site using stacks”.
When I started this thread I had not thought my needs through enough. With the proliferation of solutions I would suggest that starting with the solutions is the wrong place to begin. You need to sit down and ask some questions of what you are looking to achieve. Doing this actually makes the solution fairly self-evident.
These are some of the questions I would ask:
- One domain or many? Some CMS plugins charge per domain. You need to be aware of this.
- Whose accessing the site? If only you are creating posts you could achieve this in RW itself. If others who don’t have RW are accessing you’ll probably need to go with a CMS.
- How many posts? High volumes of posts doesn’t work well in RW. Of course you’d need to define “High volume”, but this needs some investigation.
- Hosting platform. If your hosting platform doesn’t offer databases it rules out certain solutions.
- Do you want flatfile or a database?
- If you change your solution how easy is it to get your data out? Can you migrate without breaking permalinks?
If you work through these kinds of questions you will end up with a fairly clear idea of which solution is best.
It would be great if a chart was available with all the solutions and these kinds of questions. It would certainly have helped me in choosing a solution.
The answer to this, if you want to do everything within RW, is very simple: use Poster. Poster is a great blogging stack with fantastic flexibility. It’s a no-brainer.
… however, as @svsmailus mentions there are a variety of other factors to potentially consider. All his posed questions are good ones. But it seems, to me, the fundamental question is “how do you want to post?” If I (the creator of the website) want to do all the posting then Poster is the answer. If I want others to be able to post, or I’m creating the blog for a client, then I want a CMS solution where other folks can post by accessing a special web login (i.e. they don’t need RW at all). As already mentioned there are several really good CMS solutions (Total CMS, Armadillo, and much more).
If you want to create posts yourself through RW via Poster there’s only one possible downside that I know of. Apparently there will be some practical limit of how many posts you can make before your RW project starts to slow down significantly. I don’t know what this magical number is but it’s probably something like a 1,000 posts or more.
If you give folks a little more info on what you want to achieve then we might be able to help you focus on a solution even better.
But as a RW based solution, Poster allows you to then use all the other stacks you have inside your blog. Very clean and nice. Check it out:
https://instacks.com/posterstack/
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MicroBlog is still a solid solution if you like the idea of a very simple ‘flat’ blog or news page which is low maintenance. It’s powered by Tumblr, one of the most popular blogging platforms around. You have the flexibility to quickly post new articles to your blog by email, SMS or one of the many Tumblr apps that exist. Both MicroBlog and Tumblr are free, but a donation is appreciated for MicroBlog if you find it useful or need support. I use MicroBlog in some of my own websites and websites for clients - and they love it.
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Have been using Joe Workman’s Total CMS and not being techie and with help from the forum finally got my head around it and pretty much have abandoned a conventional website. My offering is here http://guywoodland.co.uk. A big thumbs up to Total CMS…
@svsmailus To answer your original post, Poster is perfect for the requirements that you outlined, and can create the most beautiful blogs and you have complete control over how it looks. If you are running the blog yourself then there is little to no need to have a blog that needs control from a browser or App.
Will’s post above about his MicroBlog reminded me how much Tumblr and Tumblr themes appear to have improved. I recently found myself reading an impressive blog that turned out to be a Tumblr blog and I was really blown away with how good it looked and how well it integrated with the sites design.
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I can’t recommend Joe Workman’s Total Blog/CMS enough - IMO it’s the best option out there. Modern, fast with some really powerful styling. A couple I have built:
http://michelcontessa.com/ (the entire website is powered by TotalBlog - giving the client a ton of CMS options)
https://www.easthalldesign.com/blog/blog.php
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You built some nice looking sites. I been thinking about getting Total CMS from Joe too.
I got a couple of questions about the Total CMS if anyone using it on their or their client site don’t mind answering. I know I can ask Joe but I prefer to hear it from end users and their experience with it. I like unbiased feedbacks
When you built the site with Total CMS for someone else, did they have lot of control adding contents or modify it without having to depend on you or purchase RW and stacks for themselves? Does it have admin and user account or a separate stack like sitelok is need?
You create the website and the admin pages for the client and then the client manages the CMS content using a web browser. No need for the client to have RW. The admin page(s) will be protected either using the TCMS protect stack, or of you want a few more bells and whistles then Joe’s Pagesafe stack gives you additional options.
Sitelok is a completely different solution. I use it to give society member access to view specific content on the site, not to manage the site.
I am a big fan of Total CMS and I install it in almost every client project. Even my homepages are all driven by Total CMS. If clients don’t need dynamic content, then Easy CMS is my way. I can create an admin page for the client in their CI. It is a great bonus and every client loves the simplicity of the admin pages. They love editing their websites. The stacks supporting Total CMS are a great benefit. Impact, MovingBox, Gallery3 by Instacks, Photo by Nick Caves etc. are really great stacks.
Soon with the Addon “Dynamics”, the limits of Total CMS will move to a new level.
I calculate the price of Total CMS with every project. No surprises for the client.
Would agree with you on this, except on one point. What if the person creating the blog wants to be able to post away from RapidWeaver?? They go on vacation and want to post blog posts without having their laptop or desktop? Does Poster work for them?? (I ask, only because I do not know or use Poster). That would be another question a user would have to ask. They could be the only person using the blog, but they might not ALWAYS want to post from within RapidWeaver.
@zeebe Stop talking about or question my products. You know how Poster Stack works when you read the product information. That’s false play, and you and our fellow users know that. They aren’t stupid.
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Eh. They take their laptop surely. 100% solution and Poster remains the best solution for this particular requirement.
Simon’s original requirement was for a stacks based replacement for the RW Blog and then updated his post with interesting observations about helping to define your blog needs.
Luckily there are now many blog solutions available to RW users from Will’s free MicroBlog/Tumblr to Armadillo to the new ground breaking Go CMS to TCMS and right up to the feature rich PulseCMS. Where you fit into that list in ascending order of price will depend very much on what specific features you want and how many blogs you create per year. So if you create more than 3 blogs per year, well you get my point.
The beauty of the RW Blog was the fact that there was no additional cost on top of the cost of RW and also ease of use, to create a not too shabby blog. I’m sure there are many RW users that are hoping that RMS will update the RW Blog in RW8.
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tl;dr
Want to start a fight, go to a country bar and ask who makes the best pickup truck Ford or Chevy.
Want to start a heated argument on this forum, open up a two year old post on blogs and ask what’s changed.
(@Do_again) Without more requirements on what you want it’s probably not going to get you an answer.
All folks should do is answer the original question.
You might want to create a new post that outlines any requirements you want or find necessary for your needs.
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Sorry Jannis, I honestly didn’t. Have never looked at the product page. My question was completely honest.
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