2007-04-27: Changes Coming To WCC
We've had some blogs operating on this site using B2Evolution software. It has not performed up to our expectations, so we are in the process of scrapping it and moving to Pivot and Nucleus. Our flagship WordPress blog, Working @ WebConnectConsulting.com, will stay where it is, with its existing software.
Among the issues that we had with B2Evo were:
B2Evo does have a few advantages. The main three are that it costs nothing (free as in beer or zero-price), it is FLOSS, and it has multi-user/multi-blog capability built into it.
We are making the change little by little, so the current look is nothing like what we expect to present in a month or so. We are working to get the content from the B2Evo system into the replacements.
Among the issues that we had with B2Evo were:
- Missing content in the administration pages. There are random outages, during which parts of the control panel are unavailable or not working or just plain missing for several days at a time.
- The necessity to edit the "skin" and other PHP files each time you want to enable a plugin (there are a few that do not require it, but most do) or add a widget, such as a weather or news feed. This then means that any such change must be shared among all blogs that use the same skin.
- A peculiar caching problem, which keeps returning stale pages (sometimes several days old), even after you have changed the data that the page pulls from. This is particularly noticeable on the administration pages, since outsiders visiting who do not see any updates will just assume you have not made any. Of course, that will eventually affect your traffic or "hits".
- Error messages on administration pages and sometimes even on the display pages of the site.
- The arrangement of the administration pages means that you do not have a unified view of comments and trackbacks. There is no "we think all of these messages are spam. Click this button to remove them all at once." That may have been acceptable in 2001, but in 2007, if you cannot block or dump spam in one quick move, you will spend several hours trying to clean it out one by one.
- It has a nasty tendency to attract spam blogs ("splogs") sending trackbacks to its articles, as a way to get the link power to get higher SEO ranking.
B2Evo does have a few advantages. The main three are that it costs nothing (free as in beer or zero-price), it is FLOSS, and it has multi-user/multi-blog capability built into it.
We are making the change little by little, so the current look is nothing like what we expect to present in a month or so. We are working to get the content from the B2Evo system into the replacements.
