Last week I gave you five quality blogging tools and scripts and this week I am going to finish the job by giving you the second half of my favorite blogging scripts list.

Previously, WordPress was leading the charge as the best of the best, but how do these solutions stack up to that titan of the digital publishing world?

b2evolution - An old one, but still a good one - and can hold it’s own weight still with the other selections out there. Dated, but still works.

Serendipity - This is a PHP-powered weblog application which gives the user an easy way to maintain a weblog or even a complete homepage.

Joomla - Like Drupal, might be too feature rich for the casual blogging fan - but a good engine for in depth web sites or basic blogs.

Sblog - Another one similar to WordPress, looks like it is playing catchup too. Once it gets there though, might be worthy competition.

Simplog - Simple, yet powerful - the name says it all here. You want basics without the fluff - go with Simplog.

No matter which of these selections you decide to choose, you should be well off in your own content producing ways. All of them have their benefits and their drawbacks so best thing to do would be to try them all out and see which does the best job for you.

Any web developer worth his weight in PHP code can tell you that there are tons of selections when it comes to finding a blogging script that is right for you. The next time you decide to start up the Web’s next great blog you might want to take some of these choices into consideration.

1. WordPress - In my opinion WordPress is the “kind of kings” when it comes to blogging or content management in general. All hail to the king!

2. Drupal - Drupal is a little more of a WordPress jacked up on steroids. Lots of goodies and better membership system in place too.

3. AJAXPress - A little buggy by looking at the demo but will become a better idea once it has had more time to get polished.

4. Wikiblog - This one tries to mix the blogging and wiki sides of things into an interesting mashup of content creation.

5. Textpattern - Flexable and open source blogging solution - much of the same WordPress look and feel. Only problem is not that many people are using it, so support might be hard to find.

Next week I’ll have a few more selections for you to choose from in part two of this series, if you have any other suggestions you’d like to see on the list please feel free to drop me an e-mail at mitch@mitchkeeler.com or leave a comment.

Believe it or not, I have stumbled across yet another great tool to get your cPanel controlled web site backed up to your own personal computer. Site Backup CP is the newest edition to the line up and it like others has a lot of great things to love about it.

Like the others that have come before it here on the show, it gives you an easy to master interface to get your files and databases backed up from your web hosting server to your own personal computer. Give it your login information, your database names and you are all set.

It does include a scheduling feature too, so you can set it up to backup at whatever time is best for you. What does the price tag say? It is a Windows only program (runs great on Vista) - and will cost you a one time fee of $ 29.95. Not a bad price to pay for peace of mind.

After doing my review of CP Site Saver I got a comment from my buddy Gary from BlueFur talking about his own site backup solution, ResellerBackup.com. I told him to send me over a copy and I’d take a look - and I do have to say you can color me impressed. They provide several services and tools to choose from:

File Backup Tool | MySQL Backup Tool | Uptime Monitor Tool | Site Copy Tool

The names pretty much describe the services they proform, so don’t think there is much use in getting into too much detail there. I looked at the file backup tool for my review and it passed all my personal tests. Read more »

I have touched on the topic of backing up your web site time and time again. With each article or podcasts I always seem to get the same remark.

“Well, thats great - now can you make it easy?”

For a long time I’d say no. Making it easy means doing something such as cron jobs and scheduling and a lot of other things that regular people don’t want to take the time to do. Now my new solution for the easy way out it going to be…

“Go buy CP Site Saver, it is reeking of awesomeness!”

CP Site Saver is the first tool for backing up your cPanel powered web sites that I have seen that actually works. No need for filling in confusing settings and geeky details. The whole process takes a matter of minutes and then your good to go.

The interface is simple, you just tell it your hosting login information and database details and then hit the backup button. The quickness and simplistics of it all are really amazing. My beef with many programs like this is there are 200 boxes you must fill in and keep updated. CP Site Saver just get the basics and lets you relax while it does the hard work.

When your all done, you’ll also be able to unzip you backup and have a look through it. What does CP Site Saver need? Well, it might be more of a flaw in cPanel rather than their product but I would really like to be able to say, I want to backup everything but that one folder. Also I wish there was a better control on having it startup with your computer (give me a yes/no box on that choice). Those are the only “nit-picky” issue I could find though.

Now there is a price tag on all this bliss, but $49.95 isn’t asking too much when you consider the time you will be saving.

Download the free 10 day trial and give it a shot. The trial will only allow you to work with one web site and one database backup. That should be enough to sell you though on this awesome service.

Before you can have a great community, you need a great place for that community to live. That is where online forums and message boards come into play. There are a lot of great options out there, so here are a few to get you started.

MyBB (demo) - One forums script that is getting a lot of press for ease of use and easy of install is MyBB. With an active team of developers and the free price tag it is a selection that can not be overlooked.

Simple Machines Forum (demo) - Popular and free, SMF seems to be gaining a lot of ground. It is designed to provide you with all the features you need from a bulletin board while having an absolute minimal impact on the resources of the server.

phpBB (demo) - Since its creation in 2000, phpBB continues to be a leader. They do have a shady past with security issues, but hopefully they have gotten past all of that.

Vbulletin (demo) - One of the more popular solutions out there today, Vbulletin also has time on its side as well. Might want to check out their order form before giving it a shot though to make sure you want to pay for what your getting.

Vanilla (demo) - If you want something different, then Vanilla might be the way to go. It is an open-source, standards-compliant, multi-lingual, fully extensible discussion forum for the Web.

As you can see there are a lot of choices to go when it comes to message board or forum software. Which is your favorite? If I missed one of your favorites let me know.

Now it is not very often that I find Firefox extensions that Web hosting professionals and enthusiasts can get behind and get excited about. That is why I was so excited to see ServStats sent to me by person who both listens to this show and reads my Firefox blog - FirefoxFacts.com.

So what does ServStats do? Here is what the developer of the extension has to say via the Mozilla Add-ons Web site:

ServStats is a Firefox extension that lets users share statistics about web server connectivity and diagnose network failures. When a network failure occurs, ServStats automatically conducts diagnostic tests and infers the most likely cause of failure.

Now while this might not help you figure out internal server issues to your own network, it is a nice start to something that could be used to really see the inside details on how some servers do when compared with others. Also just by checking the extension you can see the number of times other people have attempted to connect to a server, the average latency and rate of failure for that server, and more.

ServStats is part of the Knowledge Plane research project at MIT. If you want to learn more about the project behind this extension you can do so at their official Web site servestats.mozdev.org.

Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 99!