typo3bloke.net

There are several posts this week in TYPO3 mailing lists about blogging with TYPO3 using timtab. Some posts compare timtab to WordPress. Since I used both, I can compare too.

I use timtab on this site and want to share some thoughts about it. This post can be seen as a summary of what I wrote in mailing lists.

Comparison: timtab vs WordPress

Installing timtab was not as easy as it was for WordPress. WordPress'es "famous installation" tool asks only two things: name and slogan of the blog. The rest is done and configured automatically (assuming you edited one file in WordPress directory, where database settings are stored - work for 10 year old boy!).

In contrast, timtab is much more painful. Firsts, you need to get tt_news. If you never worked with it (I did not use it before because I always saw it as overkill for news), it is quite difficult. This extension is pretty old. Its maintainer does a good job on renewing this extension but traces of old style and options are still there and they cannot be removed. So configuring tt_news is not trivial at all.

Next, ve_guestbook has to be installed. This was not a major problem except for the amount of spam that I started to get in a day or two. I think record was 42 spam comments in an hour.

Putting it all together requires timtab extension, which has its own bugs (trackbacks are not working, ping requires allow_url_fopen, which is security risk, etc). So I had to patch timtab locally too.

Then I had to urgently something with spam control. Fortunately someone recommended good JavaScript that stopped most of the spam.

Next I had to find how to create blogroll and other things, which can be easily done with WordPad. That took several hours. I found List module helpful but was not impressed with usability at all.

Today I installed WordPress in seconds (even though last time I operated it years ago) with custom theme. Recreated pages that I have here in TYPO3. It was just a test, I wanted to know how much easier it can be. It was alarmingly easy... WordPress is definitely great for blogging! I have to say that TYPO3 sucks in comparision with WordPress when it comes to blogging. Creating pages is still much better with TYPO3. So if you only need blogging and need not to have lots of pages - use WordPress! Do not overkill yourself with TYPO3 in this case.

Future of timtab

I am not sure what will be the future of timtab. timtab still stays TYPO3's mostly known blogging solution. What can be done to improve it?

Installation must be much better. Preferably it should be a ready package, containing all necessary extensions. Something similar to TYPO3 quickstart package.

Backend module should exist for managing blog. It should lists posts with associated comments and allow easy editing of posts and comments. This would be a big job and I doubt anyone will sponsor it... But that could make timtab really great solution for TYPO3 blogging.

P.S. Ingo, you did a great job with timtab :) Do not get offended by my comparison, please. I still use timtab :)