Powered by BLOG:CMS? No Way…
Blogging, Freeware, General Thoughts, Web Stuff August 17th, 2004
 (4 votes, average: 5 out of 5) Loading ... |
Because Open Source is not about Favors…
Change cannot always be good. Especially, when you are venturing into the unknown. I am a longtime user of WordPress Blog tool. And have installed it for a lot of friends. Now, I heard of this interesting tool on Opera Forums called Blog:CMS. It came with excellent recommendations. So, I decided to venture into the unknown and decided to switch my personal Blog from WordPress platform to Blog:CMS.
Downloaded the software, tried installing it. Failed. So, I put in some queries on the Support Forums (which was a pretty natural process as something mentioned in the install instruction did not certainly work as expected). Tried installing on another server where it worked fine for me. In few hours I got the answer to my problem. The problem was with a particular setting on my server which needed the PHP code to be enclosed within fully formatted brackets. The forum admin were good enough to help me get the affecting files fixed and install it on the primary location. So far so good.
Had some other minor issues which I routinely placed in the forums and got replies from the developer himself. Most of these replies had suggestions to give a reading to the help file which apparently was not very intuitive. Now for the kind of issues I had, I thought someone on the IRC channels would be quick to help me out considering I just wanted to get to a stage when I could Blog. Had some more issues, most of which could have been avoidable by some decent beta testing. So, I mentioned all the issues I had on the forums. Since, I was on the forum already for so many existing issues, I checked some old threads and well, that led to more questions. All the time I got answers along with the same statement, read the readme file. So, if I wanted to know what does the shared computer option on the login screen mean, I was supposed to browse through the help file.
OK, trying a search for shared inside the "/nucleus/documentation/index.html" got me nothing. With no IRC channel to match, what am I supposed to do? Make assumptions? I really do not get the real purposes of a support forum.
So, after 20 forum posts or so, I got this amazing warning sort of a message:
never, you know what, I’m fed up with your approach, you only screem and do nothing, so STOP SCREEMING, read the documentation, learn, and then come back to this forum, ok?
also, it is pretty common to say "thank you" when I answer all you questions for free..
I checked all my posts on the forum. And found no instance of screaming (capital text) or me not following the advices. In fact I managed to inform the developers of 4 minor bugs that bothered none of the earlier users.
In addition to that I got this strange warning sort of a message which meant, since I am getting support for free. I should accompany every post and reply with a thank you message. Oh! So, what I did was hurt the developer’s feelings. Being polite was not enough. He needed special thanks for every reply he gave me… I fail to remember any instance in the rules and regulations that I cannot ask for support just by being polite, and had to include "thank you" in every post. Strange times indeed. A lack of a Thank You can invoke such a response is still beyond my comprehension.
I just gave back a good, decent and polite reply to every point he made. Which unfortunately did not go down well with the developer as he removed them from the forums. That conversation can be accessed from here. Had some more discussions, which really led to the fact that the developer felt that he was doing the 10000 or so users of the Blog:CMS tool a favor by giving them software for free. And we should feel obliged by it and when asking questions… should include Thank You, and expect phrases like, if you pay me I would do it!
Later he posted comments similar to these on my own personal Blog, clearly mentioning again that he was doing me a favor. And I had no right to ask stupid questions coz he was not getting paid to support me. Now, I checked all my posts again on the support forum. None of them accused the developer for being callous (there was 1 fun filled sarcastic post, which he incidentally took in offence pretty evidently). None of them had me making repeated posts asking for same question. If the developer was not clear in giving the instruction, I just asked for more details. But nowhere did I show any discomfort from the level of personal support he was giving me. But looks like, my ignorance to not knowing the fact that he did me a big favor by letting me use the Blog:CMS tool for free and I should thank him on every instance of me having any contact with me made him mad.
Had some more meaningless conversations with me where he for no reason tried to emphasize the point that Blog:CMS was being used in 16000 websites over the web (I doubt it) and it is around 50x more feature rich than WordPress (I really never compared to 2 tools head to head). This again confused me. Because no where did I doubt the power and features of the Blog:CMS tool which I was more interested in getting to know. WordPress was no where mentioned in respect to Blog:CMS and its features.
The only logical explanation that comes to my mind is that, since I was a heavy WordPress user. Very active on WordPress forums. I must have ventured into the Blog:CMS territory planning to troll on the forums spreading bad things about an otherwise excellent tool. And more over, being not so polite I was planning to denounce him on his own portal for lack of support and gain some kind of a reputation on WordPress forums.
Sadly, my motive was not to troll on the forums of Blog:CMS. Nor did I plan to just give a 10 minute try to Blog:CMS and then label it trash (which he had done with WordPress on his personal Blog). I just wanted to give that software a good trial before I could have decided what I wanted to use full time for my own personal Blog. WordPress or Blog:CMS. In fact I am still using that fantastic tool for my personal Blog at this very moment. But, if getting support can get me accusations of being impolite troll and make the developer of the Blog tool to post messages on my personal Blog with the F-word. I do not think I can use Blog:CMS for very long.
Accepted it is free software. But the developer decided to give it to me for free. If he has the feeling that he is doing every one of us testers a favor, then well… He tarnishes the meaning of Open Source software. OSS in my opinion was supposed to be something which needed cooperating from the members of a community. And I could have done my bit for the tool Blog:CMS which I otherwise liked very much… by being a regular member of the support forums and helping new guys out. But the developer seriously has other plans. Embarrass a new user by labeling him a troll and accusing him for screaming when he was the one using capital letters everywhere.
This leads to a very sad situation. Here we have a tool with lot of potential. Some quirks which could easily be ironed out only if developer accepts the fact that more problems are likely to be discovered when a new user with a brand new server specifications arrives with no experience of using this toolset. And if you expect him to read the bible of the software just to have a working installation… without expecting him to ask stupid and maybe in fact dumb questions in the support forums is totally unrealistic.
I had love to continue using Blog:CMS considering I have just checked out only 2x of the entire toolkit. But with no IRC to back me up and the support forums (which is mostly handled by the developer himself) getting on my nerve, I do not think this party is going to last any longer. I do not have any particular reasons to move back to WordPress except for the fact that WP would get me a better support channel. No one will accuse me of being a troll. And well, instead of a documentation which I don’t know how comprehensively is written, I get access to completely searchable wiki database of every possible aspect of the program. Less features out of the box, more freedom to have messy code in the final picture. But with a support forum like WordPress, where I will even get an answer to a stupid question like "what the hell is PHP?", I just have a better comfort level.
Blog:CMS beats WordPress comprehensively when it comes to toolkit and feature set (I do not need to tell you, just read the main features on the right ride of both the websites). But you really cannot make use of the features unless there is polite help accessible all the time. And also, you do not have to bear the burden of being under some developer’s favors of giving you software for free when you use WordPress. Money is not the only way of repaying something. And I do not need to brag about my participation in the support forums of WordPress no matter I only deal with the simple questions! 
Sorry mate, I just needed a software. Not a favor.
It is just a case of a brilliant code written by a brilliant coder with poor people skills and huge personal ego. He will do much better if he leave forum moderations to knowledgeable people with patience and capacity to handle dumb newbies who are present everywhere. Be it WP forums, Blog:CMS Forums, Opera forums or Neowin Forums. But this stands true only if he really wants more user to start using it as their primary Blog Tool.
Related Posts
And yesh, WordPress 1.2 is out!
WordPress 2.7 Beta 1 released. Final version delayed.
WordPress For iPhone set to be launched
About
blog cms is a complete ripoff of the original…if you went to the source, you would have none of thoe problems that you mentioned…radek is a tool…
if you would speak czech/slovak, which is native language of developer BlogCMS - Radek Hulan you would sure know that here in Czech/Slovak rep. are two groups of people:
1. People who know that Radek Hulan is arrogant idiot.
2. People who don’t know yet that Radek Hulan is arrogant idiot. :lol:
And your artcile just supports what we all know. :-)
Everything what markoff typed is truth.
“It is just a case of a brilliant code written by a brilliant coder with poor people skills and huge personal ego.” This quote is terse.
Well, when I wrote this post… I had no idea Blog:CMS was nothing but Nucleus packaged with some plugins and skins. I thought it was an evolution of Nucleus like WordPress is for B2… :)
No, Nucleus is still alive and kickin’!
In fact, Radek choosing a seperate path with his coding efforts (blogcms) has had a positive effect on the Nucleus community. There are more people contributing now (and not only plugins); the forum has been restructured; new sub-sites have been started (Skins, Docs, Plugins Showcase, Dev Network). And thanks to blogcms, conversion tools for WP and Phpnuke (2 Nucleus) are now available.
So it appears radek’s actions ahve actually benefitted Nucleus. Funny, eh?
The morale of my comment: try out Nucleus if you wnt to see what WP’s competition is capable of. (But TXP is also very interesting! (I’m playing with it on one of my own site’s at the moment))
Greetings from a long-time Nucleus fan!
http://wordpress.org/support/7/10883
Sushubh,
if you think *you* had a tango with our 1000-hours-of-work-for-free server-hacking Einstein, then you don’t know life yet.
Roel,
I wish I had invested my time and efforts in Nucleus itself, and not the offspring (notice the past perfect tense). Anyhow, I lost interest in log tools, and came back to m beloved CSS. :]
M.
i did not understood that comment moose, but i think you also had a bad experience with blog:cms :)
The tool is just fine. But I understand the term psychopath’ better now. The encyclopaedic medical definition is much wider than that which is commonly used in speech.
As a side note, I couldn’t find any contact info ( mean email) on *any* of your million websites. That is on purpose, or am just blind? :) Just teasing, but I’d appreciate a hint.
M.
Whatever, whatever… The truth is, that within 3 months after BLOG:CMS launch, there are 4.170 sites linking to BLOG:CMS, and using it, and a *single* unhappy Indian (Sushubh).
I consider this to be a real success.
You stated that *you* make me a favor, using BLOG:CMS, and I shall be happy answering your stupid questions. You’re wrong. Despite you, writing stupid articles, I give something to Open Source community, that is useful, and used by thousands. That speaks for itself :-)
i have been tracking your visits to this post from your ISP eurotel.cz from tons of ex Blog:CMS users who are linking to this post show the insecurities you have…
Be happy, you have some users left…
Ok, Sushubh, you’re da man!
You think managed to scare few users out from BLOG:CMS? That is a a *great* achievement! God bless you, BUDDY!
PS: no, you didn’t ;-) There are more and more users every day, one screaming Indian doesn’t matter to them. They can download the system and decide themselfs.
I’m still waiting for the promised sub-categories and multiple categories for posts promised a long time ago for BLOG:CMS. Actions speak louder than words.
Blog:CMS is not to be.
Have a look at Software Journal ? Powered by BLOG:CMS? Perhaps NeverWell, I didn’t read this before deciding to ditch Blog:CMS, but it has helped me decide 100% percent.I can definately sympathize…
yikes–”rADo” — if you’re the guys sushubh is referring to–then i’d have to believe the other character references. i honestly originally read this thinking that this guy could perhaps be whining a bit (i’m a completely neutral party–i just found this through some clicks on google)
i read your response, and it’s definitely NOT that of someone whose “favors” i would even want to accept.
“One Indian”? what kind of crap is that?
Having tested about a dozen of blog tools, including WordPress, the original nucleus, Geeklog, BLOG:CMS and others, I think I have a pretty neutral view on this.
Unlike Sushubh (teehee, I always smile when I read that :) I had no major problems installing _any_ of the tools I tested. I decided I’d give each a two week test drive, and then decide which to use.
During my testing I found WordPress somehow a little too “professional” for my taste (It’s hard to explain. It’s just like the tool and I don’t work together very well) and nucleus a bit too bare.
During my test run with BLOG:CMS I started getting more and more annoyed with the little problems, constantly popping up. Nothing major, but every now and then I’d get annoyed by something not working the way it was supposed to, but rather through a “side-track”. (Oh god my english is terrible!)
Anyway. Now, a bit over a year after deciding to stick with b2evo, I find this article, and started discussing it with my friends and find out that I’m - in one way or another - related to more than a hundred ex-blogcms-users (most of whom have moved to nucleus) who’ve had their own strugles with the tool.
The meaning of my post will have little impact on the discussion, but I’d just like to thank Sushubh for writing this, as it has made thing so much clearer to me (again, hard to explain, I just feel better knowing I’m not the only one, who’s had problems with the tool - not due to ignorance or lack of interest, but rather due to, at least in part, to some really colourful coding practice)
(I _still_ think using short tags or relying on register globals beinf on in php is lazy and ignorant)
:)
I for one am glad to see that I’m not the only one totally offended by that asshat developer at BLOG:CMS. Who the fark wants to deal with someone like that or even give them the satisfaction of using their software? Imagine if that idiot decides to just outright stop all support altogether and not patch bugs at all! Get ready to pucker up and kiss his Indian arse if you want to get help then!
On behalf of Czech republic, I deeply apologize for this individual. Most of us are not like him. He may be genius, but he just can’t behave.
hey, all i wanna know is how to get ma name in colour on msn beta?
just started to test wordpress and as a blog:cms user as well I thought it would be a good idea to look for a comparison between wordpress and blog:cms. but this discussion seems to be completely wrong. so - where are the facts? IMHO radek is a great programmer -with some strange attitude. the idea to integrate punbb forum and some other tools like wiki + photo gallery to a new package is nice, so if you look for such a bundling of tools blog:cms could be of interest to you. answers to more interesting questions would be nice, for example someone told me that wordpress would be a pain (poor performance) if reaching 1000 articles and more.
facts? u have a screenshot with his comments. if he has an attitude like that, he should not be developing ‘open source’ applications. as for wordpress, i have multiple wordpress blogs with more than 1000 posts and have never suffered performance issues. maybe you should check out the developer’s own blog at photomatt.net
> he should not be developing â??open sourceâ?? applications.
i think the open source idea is not altruistic motivated, imho it’s seo-driven. a “free” tool results in free links which transfer into pagerank and link popularity. but does “real” altruism exist ;-)
the guy how told me about the performance problems tried to build up a new blog-service with wordpress - and changed to pLog which was much better for his requirements. so perhaps it becomes a problem in conjunction with small web hosating packages.
right. we all know what matt did with wordpress.org and we all know radek so proudly places his own crappy blog in the footer of all blog:cms based sites. i hate the second thing quite a bit.
People like this ruin the Open Source community for everybody else.. I wont even vist their site now. Nice work on making people aware.
Unfortunately I have had similar experiences with Radek Hulan. I must admit I have never given Radek the benefit of the doubt. I just can’t stand it when someone rips off other people’s code so blatantly.
Radek basically slapped together a bunch of open-source tools and libraries (sometimes deleting original copyright notices, sometimes leaving them in tact but adding his own), adding them on to Nucleus. While a nice concept, the Blog:CMS source code is a giant mess of ugly hacks designed to make various things work together _with minimal effort_. As a result, Blog:CMS is buggy (not to mention ugly) and generally annoying to work.
Radek is *not* a skilled coder suffering from bad interpersonal skills. He is an individual with mediocre skills who is trying his best to milk the open source community. Needless to say every current copy of Blog:CMS ships with Radek’s banking information squarely in the demo post.
My encounters with Radek happened about a year ago. In that time, Blog:CMS has added more features without fixing old issues. Nucleus CMS, on the other hand, has improved remarkably. It has tightened up security and added anti-spam measures, and added new skins that look infinitely better than the crap that Blog:CMS ships with.
Cheers.
The answer would seem to be to go for another branch and pull blog:cms->New:CMS arround to NucleusCMS as far as is codingly possible while keeping all the good bits.
My only grip about B:C was the lack of really easy login intergration. Mind you the NucleusCMS- MEMBER.CLASS is quite a livlely one to get to grips with.
Anyone done a decent diff on NucleusCMS v BLOG:CMS codebase?
Anyone know how far branched the two are and what it would take to heal said branch and allow all Blog:CMS users back in to NucleusCMS? or vise-versa?
Latest it security flaw
=================================================
HP warns over OpenView flaw
John Leyden, The Register 2005-08-31
Enterprise users are been urged to apply workarounds following the discovery of a potentially troublesome vulnerability involving a component of HP’s widely used network management suite, HP OpenView. A security bug in Network Node Manager opens the door to possible hacker attack, according to work by security researchers at Portcullis Computer Security and NGS Software.
Network Node Manager (NNM) allows networks managers to monitor and control the operation of network devices. The flaw creates a means for hackers to execute potentially malicious shell commands by exploiting inadequate input checks involving scripts (e.g. cgi-bin/connectedNodes.ovpl) used by various versions of NNM. The vulnerability affects versions 6.2, 6.4, 7.01, and 7.50 of OpenView NNM running on HP-UX, Solaris, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Linux systems.
Find more on It security on…
Security Focus - It security news
Security News Portal
It security news from 120 sources
Windows Security related news
IT security news portal
Lord Matt,
You can just upgrade from Blog:CMS to the latest Nucleus (3.22). Some plugins may not work correctly after that, but you can probably uninstall most of those. Visit the Nucleus forum for help, if you need any.
(You can also try to import everything into WordPress of Textpattern using their importers, when available. Both are excellent tools. I believe WordPress has RSS import? That will work with a Blog:CMS/Nucleus install _but_ you will lose all comments posted to your site)
I’ve formulated a plan that should fix my problems with the B:C issues. I’m going to dump the buggy old dukuwiki for MediaWiki which can take PHP in the skin (thus I can wrapper it for my blog.) the gallery can kiss my butt and get lost and Nucleus to cover the blog (I’m going to try for a database transpose) that leaves only PhunBB which is perfectly scaled for the job in hand… that might have to stay but the plugin to tie B:C with it might work if pushed for nucleus.
I’m thinking of setting up a SourceForge Project and calling it Blog:HACK or some such and just confessing that what we have is hacks and bodges…
It’s like a prophesy comeing true all at once: http://forum.blogcms.com/viewtopic.php?pid=7230 (”Stop screaming, read my text file etc etc”).
he is just like he was a couple of months ago… bravo indeed.
Someone in the Open Source community takes a base (NucleusCMS) and edits it a bit (BLOG:CMS) than he dares to say you can’t use one of his plugins as a base? LINK
jerk… :)
I used to be a hardcore user of blogcms. It does have a lot more features that WP and the skinning system is far better. Then i found out that Blog:cms is just a hacked, pre-modded version of the original NucleusCMS. I switched to Nucleus and installed the plugins i needed. Nucleus is very stable and functional. I suggest you try out Nucleus and browse through the huge plugin repository. Im sure you’ll like it.
P.S. Radek Hulan is a super jerk. He’s not a genius. He made some plugins himself (so did I) and released a pre-modded version of Nucleus.
I was looking for some thread on the Nucleus forum and bump into this old thread.
http://forum.nucleuscms.org/viewtopic.php?t=3815
I called it b:cms - episode 0, aka The born (fork) of b:cms
In this thread, karma, the Nucleus main developer, found out what radak did to his code (after I reported the very suspicious submission), then all turns ugly. Entertaining read…..
You be the judege.
Radek Hulan just managed to surprise me even more with his assholism.
Very funny.
When some users (exactly 3 of them, from many thousands) do not understand complex BLOG:CMS, they come here, screeming. Other users tend to find mistake in their education, or whatever, and learn more, not screeming.
But 3 users here blame main developer for all THEIR faults. Interesting. Ok, I admit, all their falls are in fact my own faults, so that they are happy :-))
It is definitely possible to build HUGE websites with BLOG:CMS, but this system is not for beginners. Please DO NOT USE IT IF YOU ARE A BEGINNER. Go for WordPress in that case, or some other simple tool.
For a list of few websites built with BLOG:CMS, please refer to: http://hulan.cz/webdesign/
You have not see nothing yet… http://forum.nucleuscms.org/viewtopic.php?t=9230
more fun on the episode: http://forum.nucleuscms.org/viewtopic.php?t=9347&highlight=
Some translation of radak’s writings…..
It might please you to know that this page got a link in wikipedia on the nucleus / b:cms front.
radek wont let them stay there :)
The revert link is my friend!
heh true. hail to the power of the wikipedia!
Hello friends!!
What in the name of Jerry Brightonhammer was that all about?
I dont’ know but it doesn’t make sense to me.
I totally recognize everything said here. I have been a Blog:CMS user for a ling time, I have started with Nucleus, moved to Nucleus XE and via that to Blog:CMS.
I originally moved from Nucleus to Blog:CMS because of the handy integration of many pre-configured plugins. However, I became more and more annoyed that Radek continued to add features I did not need but that did make my life more difficult while upgrading to the newest version for security reasons.
A long time I have accepted these quirks (and ignored the patronizing behaviour of Radek on his support forum), but the update of Blog:CMS 4.2 caused that many issues with my weblog that I really got fed up with Blog:CMS being a one-person operation. Also see this forum thread: http://forum.blogcms.com/viewtopic.php?id=2241&p=2
So I finally went back to Nucleus and find out that luckily the database structure is still almost the same, so after comparing the two SQL table structures (mind you, the Blog:CMS documentation is outdated here, 4.2 has a slightly different database structure than its documentation shows) and with some work in MySQL in deleting table columns Radek has added that Nucleus does not have, I was able to completely migrate my weblog to Nucleus.
Also, the Nucleus plugin community is that active that I managed to include almost all of the features that Nucleus Core is lacking compared to Blog:CMS again with minimal effort and on top of that included some really helpful plugins that Blog:CMS lacks.
So my advice to all Blog:CMS users still left is indeed to migrate asap to Nucleus.