Addendat 1.0 review

Addendat is a blogging program that can accept updates from either a CGI interface or a shell interface

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Deekoo L.

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Addendat is a blogging program that can accept updates from either a CGI interface or a shell interface. Additions are stored as HTML, so you can edit both entries and design in any ordinary text editor.

It is configured using a simple HTML-like config file format and supports multiple blogs, even on the same page. It does not require Java or JavaScript and can publicize additions on a central hub, making it easy for Web users to find recently-updated blogs.

It supports comments and archiving, can post entries to LiveJournal, and features configurable comment spam countermeasures.

Here are some key features of "Addendat":
It now (as of version 1.0, released in May 2005) supports web-based entry editing and deletion.
It uses challenge/response verification to try to retard comment spam. Unlike those stupid images, Addend?t's method works on Lynx.
Oh, and it supports comments, too.
It has a very flexible and generalized (in my opinion) configuration language; you can add support for arbitrary form fields, archiving, and conditional display (chunks of data that only show up if a given field was filled in) in the template language without touching a line of perl.
It has a verbose and perhaps even useful manual to explain it.
It has a friendly installer for those of you with shell access to your servers.
It does not require you to install or create a database.
It has a command-line tool for people (like the author) who are crazy enough to prefer to write their blog entries in vim (or other editors.).
The only perl modules it requires are Tie::Hash, CGI, Fcntl, and File::Temp.
It can propagate entries to remote CGIs and/or LiveJournal.
It's open source, so you can peer suspiciously at it to see if I've put trojans in it.
It has a hub (see sidebar. Er, sidebox.) on which recently updated blogs can be posted.
Your blog is kept in a bunch of static HTML pages, so you don't have to wait for the program to start every time you're looking at an entry.
It runs on your server. You don't have to worry about a problem with my site breaking anything but the hub; you don't have to give me your passwords; you don't have to turn on Javascript or cookies in your web browser.

Requirements:
Permission to install CGIs on your webserver, or a shell account on it.
A web browser. Lynx will work. So should anything else you throw at it; if Addendat doesn't work in some weird browser that nobody's ever heard of, tell me and I'll see if I can fix it.
Perl. You'll also need LWP::UserAgent if you want updates to your blog to show up here.
Addendat attempts to work on all unices, under perl 5.005, 5.6, and 5.8. In the event you have a problem getting it to run, or if you need to change it to make it behave on some system, let me know. It should be trivial to make it behave on other unices; don't know how it'll be on NT.