Elliott C. Back: Technology FTW!

Wordpress v.s. Typo

Posted in Blogging, Computers & Technology, Web 2.0 by Elliott Back on December 30th, 2005.

My friend Zenchic writes about Wordpress versus Typo:

So, me? I’ll take Typo any day. Sure, it does about 1/10 of what WP does, but I’m okay with that. You watch, tags and live-search will be in WP 3.0. Even Wordpress can’t hide from Web 2.0.

But, I just can’t leave this alone. Let’s first look at Typo’s feature set, and see how it stacks up against Wordpress 2.0:

# Instant publishing, no rebuilding necessary

Check

# Comments

Check

# Built in spam protection

Check–via the slick Akismet

# Textile and Markdown and Smartypants support

Check–via content filters

# Ping / Trackback

Check

# Categories / Tags

Check–tags can be enhanced with plugins

# TadaList, del.icio.us, Flickr, 43 Things, and Upcoming.org syndication

Check–but with third party plugins

# Ajax based live search and commenting

Check–with plugins. See the K2 theme.

# Ajax based comment moderation

Check? You don’t need to moderate comments in Wordpress, usually.

# Fulltext search with live preview

Check–with a plugin.

# RSS2 and Atom feeds as well as feeds for comments and trackbacks

Check

# Comment feeds

Check

# Modern caching. Typo only creates the xml files when needed and serves static copies to your subscribers.

Check–Wordpress’s is better.

# Supported databases: Mysql, Sqlite, and PostgreSQL

Nope. I think WP is MySQL only…

# Easy to type permalinks (like blog.leetsoft.com/articles/2005/01/29/syndication-and-tada )

Check–totally customizable, too.

# Web based administration and posting interface

Check

# Migration scripts from MovableType 3.x, Text Pattern 1.x , WordPress 1.5x as well as plain RSS

Check

OK, so why are you using Typo, and why does it even exist? It doesn’t have any super-awesome new features….

This entry was posted on Friday, December 30th, 2005 at 10:10 pm and is tagged with check comments, check tags, preview check, tadalist, content filters, party plugins, fulltext search, 43 things, web based administration, markdown, sqlite, feature set, ajax, k2, wordpress, stacks, moderation, new features, migration, akismet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.

Viewing 11 Comments

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    Typo is built on Rails which is an essential thing if you want to be part of the gee-whiz-bang Web 2.0 hype bandwagon.

    I worked with it extensively while developing this non-award winning theme and I kinda like it. However it's nothing compared to WordPress when it comes to maturity and feature-completeness.

    Calling Typo 'better than WP' reminds me of all those new Ruby 'developers' who keep screaming out that Ruby code looks 'beautiful' compared to PHP code which looks 'ugly' or 'awkward'. It's a full busload of crap of course. There's nothing 'better' about Ruby compared to PHP and there's nothing 'better' about Typo compared to WordPress. It's all in the eye of the (biased) beholder really.

    Don't get this the wrong way, I like Typo, it's a nice little weblog system. It just no match for WordPress yet and I doubt it will ever be.

    Elliott, maybe you and I should setup some nifty screencasts in 2006 in which we show the world how to program a kick ass Web 2.0 WordPress plugin in 10 minutes? :D
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    Okay, you're right. I really have no *good* reason to be using it, but thanks for directing a little attention to my tiny corner of the blogosphere.

    Typo is built with RoR, and that's kinda fun to me. I think that RoR has some potential to do some cools things (witness things by 37 Signals. I don't run a big blogging network that people actually read ;) I'm allowed to have a little fun.

    Besides, if everyone used WP and no one invested time & energy in new things, then WP would get old and crusty and not do new things. Competition breeds innovation, you know?

    Don't get me wrong: I used WP for a while, and certainly liked it. WP 2.0 looks very nice. I was unaware that there are plugins for live-search, AJAX comments and such (simply because I didn't really care to look). If I switched back to WP, I'd probably be just as happy as with Typo, maybe more so. Still, I'll stand behind my choice. Why? [shrug] Because it's fun.
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    Just had sex with Dean. His ass was tagged and 0wned!
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    There's one simple reason why I switched to Typo. If I need to change anything there it's extremely transparent, fast and easily understood by anyone who ever used Rails. All Rails apps are similar. No mystery "loops" WP uses and other nasty PHP things to learn. I needed to add podcasts, feeds? Took very little time. Otherwise I agree, Typo lacks some WP features, but hey... I'm the one who adds them :-)
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    I really don't see the point in debate which is better WP or Typo, neither of them are broken and neither of them are doing the exact same thing.

    When comparing features, you really should have a set of features that make the most robust blogging platform. Only a set of tools that are necessary for a blogger, then evaluate the things that are extra, but even then, make no exception, they ARE extra.

    Bloat sometimes is bad, for example, I went from WP to TXP because of the features, but then I reverted back to WP because TXP is way too bloated with features even your mother doesn't need and after WP 2.0 I fell off the grid because WP got even more features that were totally unnecessary, so I went for Typo.

    Granted, it has alot of features I propably never use, but it is sitting on a platform I can easily modify to my needs, which means if I need a new feature, it only takes me about 20 minutes to have it up and running.

    I love and use all three blogging platforms (WP, TXP & Typo) in my various projects, and I wouldn't say that other is better than the other, it's about what suits you, Typo is used in my most complicated project with most hacks where WP is used in the least complicated project but because of it's easy to make updates interface it is perfect for the job.

    So go now and go debate which is better Winnie or Mac kids, it is pointless.
    • ^
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    I use wordpress for my personal blog, but after using and testing some other platforms I have started to doubt my decision to use wordpress.
    Typo was the fore-runner, followed by logahead (php). Personally, I found Typo simply "amazing" and lightweight. I had to do a lot of modding and clearing to clean out wordpress, and had a lot of things pretty much "pointless" for my application.

    That being said, I still haven't switched to using Typo on my personal blog since my host does not support ruby on rails (I tested typo on a different server), though I still use typo on my other websites with better hosts.

    It is true though that the whole thing is in the eye of the holder. Wordpress is nifty and all, but the backend is too cluttered, and overall, the php is too cluttered. Too much happening, not enough time. Plus, with widgets and all, i can actually see wordpress is copying some of the features in typo
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    From my relatively unscientific benchmarks, Typo is about two orders of magnitude faster than Wordpress 2.0.2.

    The setup:
    Latest lighttpd, PHP5, and eAccelerator. Both Wordpress and Typo were setup to run as FastCGI processes. Wordpress and Typo were both stock installs, using the default themes, each with a generic test post.

    Wordpress 2.0.2 = ~95 requests/second.
    Typo 2.6.0 = ~10000 requests/second.

    As you pointed out, it has essentially the same feature set... so why not go with the one that viciously outperforms?
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    I wouldn't bandy that benchmark around if you want to big up typo; we've made it considerably slower since then; it turns out that we couldn't make Typo do some of the things we wanted it to do without going to a fragment caching architecture instead of the blisteringly fast page cached system.

    Brainpower is being expended (but only at a fairly low priority when not dealing with other issues) trying to work out how to get page caching back, but don't hold your breath.
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    The biggest problem with Typo (and Rails in general) is that people just don't understand how completely unreliable persistent processes are on shared webspace. It's not like PHP where you can just install it and let it run forever... you need to be constantly babysitting Typo, shelling in every couple days to save it from its own memory leaks and crashes.

    Obviously, these problems can be worked around, but they're definitely a shocker to those of us accustomed to the rock-solid reliability that PHP offers.
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    Marco - people are free to have their opinions about why they think one language is 'better' than another. It's still just that, an opinion. YMMV.

    I, for one, find Ruby to be a much more elegant language than PHP, Java, or Python. As someone said, it's a different kind of hammer, not necessarily a better one.

    As for the topic of WordPress vs. Typo, I'll stick to WordPress any day of the week.
    • ^
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    I'm going to say that WP and Typo are in two different worlds for comparing. WP has a great number of themes, whereas Typo has a lot of theme compatability issues and is still growing in that department. Once people get more on the ball about making good typo themes, it won't be such an issue. As far as features go, they are very similar as the list shows.
 

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