Personal offline blogs

by Suw on September 15, 2005

OK, so here's a thing. If I want to run multiple offline blogs on my iBook which will never be published online, but still have basic blog functionality – like categories, permalinks, search – what software should I use? Can I set up MT or WordPress locally like that without having to do weird shit to my iBook to make it work?
UPDATE: Thanks to Tom, I now have WordPress installed locally and can make blogs to my highly systemised heart's content. It even plays nicely with Ecto. Oooh PKM heaven! (PKM == Personal Knowledge Management, to you normal people.)

Anonymous September 15, 2005 at 10:55 am

You have got Apache, PHP, Mysql installed on your ibook, right? in which case, just install your favourite blogging software.
That was easy. Not.

Anonymous September 15, 2005 at 11:15 am

I personally haven't installed Apache, PHP or Mysql on my iBook and was sorta (possibly vainly) hoping not to have to.

Anonymous September 15, 2005 at 11:33 am

Suw – I've got several local installs of Wordpress running on my Powerbook. Dead simple to set up. You'll need to install MySQL, but other than that, Apache and PHP are all on there. It's all easily configured.
Give me a shout – you know the email – and I can give you a hand, if you want. It's all very easy to set up. Alternatively if you're in the vicinity… which I think you might be soon, I can chat to you then. But yeah, Wordpress is a synch to get going locally, and it means you can testdrive designs, plugins, the whole shebang.

Anonymous September 15, 2005 at 11:41 am

Depends what you mean by “weird shit”
If weirdShit = Terminal you'll want to avoid this recipie: http://maczealots.com/tutorials/wordpress/
If weirdShit = Voodoo you'll want to avoid VoodooPad (local wiki thing – does tags, search and links but is not sequential) http://flyingmeat.com/voodoopad/

Anonymous September 15, 2005 at 11:56 am

Tom, that sounds perfect. I am in the vicinity atm, as I'm living in Ham before moving to Kathryn's in a week. I'll drop you an email and maybe we can find a time to sort this out.

Anonymous September 15, 2005 at 12:02 pm

By 'weird shit' i sorta meant apache, Mysql, to be honest, I think i can cope with. Maybe, if someone holds my hand whilst I install it.
I do already use VooDooPad, and I love it to bits, but it's not quite what I have realised I need. It's great for linked documents, but for major project notes it gets a bit unwieldy.

Anonymous September 15, 2005 at 1:52 pm

This will help easy the pain of the Apache/MySQL/PHP installs:
http://serverlogistics.com/downloads.php

Anonymous September 15, 2005 at 2:10 pm

I'll second this. I used to do it for a living, but installing MySql, PHP and Apache is still a pain in the backside. The server logistics downloads make it all really easy. I run my own offline knowledge base on my old 1GHz Powerbook, using Drupal.

Anonymous September 15, 2005 at 2:54 pm

There's no reason why you can't use MT for this – MT doesn't need MySQL, and publishes static HTML files by default, so I don't think you need Apache or any other web server.
In short – yes.

Anonymous September 15, 2005 at 6:03 pm

Suw, I've installed WP locally a few times, and it was easy. People (even only semi-geeks) have been recommending XAMPP for the Apache/MySQL/PHP install (the “X” was supposed to mean Windows XP, but it seems they have a Mac version under the same name. (Have a look first, though… since MacOS is based on BSD, something might be installed already. I wouldn't knowl. Is an Apache daemon running?)
The same goes presumably for MT, except that you need Perl (which you also might have already), and that the installation is reputed to be more difficult than WP's very simple 5-min procedure.
(Oh, and thanks to Tom Armitage for the eggcorn.)

Anonymous September 15, 2005 at 6:11 pm

Tom and I are meeting up on Saturday so he can go through the WP installation with me. 🙂 I have no idea if an Apache daemon is runnig – doesn't appear to be one when i look at the runnig processes, but then, i am nto sure what i am looking for. If it's not called 'apache daemon' then i'd have no idea if it was or not.

Anonymous September 15, 2005 at 6:19 pm

A process called “apached”. And once you're at it, MySQL comes in daemonic form (mysqld), too. ps -ejH on the command line.
(And I apologise for having your URL committed to a DB you detest.)

Anonymous September 15, 2005 at 10:20 pm

ah, don't worry. I've made peace with eggcorns now. 😉

Anonymous September 16, 2005 at 10:56 am

The server is in System Preferences, under Sharing, then Personal Web Sharing. Go to localhost.

Anonymous September 17, 2005 at 10:34 pm

Alternative PKM solutions for the Mac are Tinderbox and Devonthink, of course. I'm sure Danny and his buddy Merlin over at 43 Folders could assist….

Anonymous September 17, 2005 at 10:58 pm

The nice thing about wordpress is that it's free. unlike tinerbox and devonthink. I decided a while back not to test tinderbox, even though many have said it's great, because I'd rather use tools that were free or free-ish, and which I an muck about with to my heart's content. Atm, with voodoopad, novamind and wordpress, I'm set.

Anonymous September 19, 2005 at 6:51 am

look for apachectl : this is the script which starts and stops Apache.
Type
apachectl status
and it will tell you if it is running or not.

Anonymous September 20, 2005 at 10:27 pm

Oh I've seen this post only now 🙂
Same flavour here: I installed locally a wordpress and are spreading the pKM word in every office I go.
To complete the setup I actually setup a wiki too, using the mediawiki engine (the thing under Wikipedia's hood): really easy to install (a little more tricky if you wanna do hot stuff) and quite rewarding.

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