Tom Hoffman writes:
Let’s take half a step back and look at the architectural design of the weblogging apps that seem to have the most traction these days (leaving aside hosted services like Blogger). In generating a frequently-updated page, like a blog, there are two primary strategies, which of course are often mixed and cached in various ways.
Create a database and a system of templates for HTML and RSS that plugs in current values “on the fly” as the pages are requested. Zope works this way. Slash does. I think Frontier/Manila does, but I really don’t know; and I bet Drupal does, based on the nature of PHP, but that is a guess. I’ll open comments so you can chime in if you know. Create an application that takes user input, creates or re-creates the appropriate HTML and RSS docuements and places them on a web server to be served up by a standard web browser. Radio and Movable Type both work this way (although few people run their own Radio Community Server). Blosxom can swing either way, but feels like it because of its overall lightweight architecture and extensive use of the filesystem instead of a database. I think one of the subtler messages we can pick up from this “revolution” is that systems that de-emphasize complexity on the server side are driving a lot of the growth we’re seeing.
Adds Roland Tanglao: “The future is systems like MovableType and Radio that generate static HTML that can be served by simple static servers like Apache and IIS? Or is the future hosted systems like Blogger and Blogware? I think the future is both and most people will use hosted systems as long as they can get their data out quickly and put it in another system.”
