I recently asked for recommendations for a blogging script through .net forum to fulfil the requests of those wanting something more professional than FanUpdate, but without the relative bloat of WordPress. @otherniceman was kind enough to point me in the direction of Habari and not only was I impressed enough to have used it as the base of several recommendations, but I’ve also converted my own site to it.
You may remember that it was only last year I recommended Chyrp. Indeed, I still like the quirky little script. Unfortunately however, with over 18,000 comments and nearly 1,000 entries my blog does not like it. Even today where my traffic is half what it was in the summer of last year — not blogging for 12 months does that to ya — Chyrp cannot cope. With my plans to cut the crap to free up some time, I need something that’s going to keep me live without daily babysitting.
Habari is in most respects almost like a “WordPress lite” (weighing in at some 5MB smaller than WP), something which many of us have been crying out for over the years. With that said, it’s not something new and just on the shelf… development started in 2007 as far as I’ve been able to gather, with some of the original WordPress contributors getting it where it is today. The project appears to be maintained by the community, for the community and has a tight security record so far.
As part of the conversion I have, as previously touched upon, cut out some of the crappy older articles from the site and have converted the rest into blog entries. Likewise, old reviews have been moved over and can be found using the tag “review“. The scripts page has been compressed down into one block instead of multiple pages with inspiration drawn from Cine’s script page.
Converting hasn’t been a quick task simply because of the mass amounts of content and entries, and I hope that it pays off in the long run. In the mean time, you’re more than welcome to report bugs to me in the comments below or via e-mail: jem@jemjabella.co.uk
Known Issues
Half of my redirects aren’t working. Arse.- Most of my entries are untagged, giving some empty links (e.g. Pants on right)
Comments lists are as of yet unstyledFeedburner has a cached installer page instead of feed.- Feed featuring some very old posts (sorry)
29 Sep at 9:42 pm
Oh, this design is HOT! ;) I love the fonts you have used, instead of using Georgia and Arial… it is a big improvement.
YAY for Habari!
29 Sep at 9:43 pm
And let’s try for the third time… The most useless comment I have ever written… well here it comes. Thanks, now I can go to bed. Night :D
29 Sep at 9:46 pm
w00t!
Remember to change your feed URL in feedburner…. *NAGNAGNAGNAG* >:P ;)
29 Sep at 10:26 pm
test comment – need to style author comments too.
eww, tab from texterea doesn’t work – must fix.
29 Sep at 10:38 pm
Liking the layout and simplicity. It’s odd, but it does "feel" (is that possible?) less bloated than WordPress.
29 Sep at 11:08 pm
I played with Habari when you tweeted about it. It seems like a fun script. :)
29 Sep at 11:23 pm
Welcome to the world of Habari. Enjoy the ride. Great looking theme.
29 Sep at 11:34 pm
Loving the new look :) And oooo, a new blogging script, that’s always fun :D
30 Sep at 12:29 am
GRAVATAR NAO! Looking good here Jem :)
30 Sep at 12:39 am
I really like this layout! :D I liked the last one too, but I prefer this one.
30 Sep at 12:59 am
Oh wow! I’ve never heard of Habari. Hmm, maybe I’ll test it out soon. Thanks Jem.
30 Sep at 1:05 am
Looks great, and glad you’re enjoying Habari. I know you’ve discovered the #habari IRC channel and, along with the mailing list, you’ve got help waiting to sort out those known issues :)
30 Sep at 1:26 am
Woah… at first I was like "whose site is this and why am I on it?" Ha, love the new layout, Jem. I wish WordPress had a "lite" version. 700 files is just plain shit, and I don’t even use half of the crap inside of WP. Whatever, it’s cute, this is cute, you’re cute. :3
30 Sep at 2:07 am
oooh. This is the prettiest theme ever. Definitely my fav so far ^^
30 Sep at 2:10 am
Sorry, one more comment. Did you keep your awesome fan art page? I don’t see it anywhere (unless i’m blind ~_~). Those ninja’s were so adorable, i think you should have a link to them some where on your about me page.
30 Sep at 2:24 am
Not that you need approval, but thumbs up from me. :)
I’d suggest creating more spacing (or a divider?) between individual blog entries on the front page – they’re kind of melting into each other at the moment.
30 Sep at 3:00 am
Habari uses really real HTML Strict rather than shitty fauXHTML?
I like it already! :O
… maybe in another nine year’s time I’ll get around to converting again. :P
30 Sep at 8:33 am
It’s a tad bright for my tired old eyes, but I do like the font and layout :)
30 Sep at 9:36 am
A belated welcome to Habari Jem. I do hope you enjoy it the way we do. Loving the new look :)
30 Sep at 9:36 am
Oooh…I remember testing Habari out about a year ago and I did think it was nice. I just couldn’t figure out how to work around the templating system. LOL
30 Sep at 10:42 am
It looks great! I’m glad the conversion went successfully! Now I know three people who have converted to Habari. I’m actually considering converting myself and finally sucking it up and making my own theme again. I’ve been researching it ever since Melissa at melly.me) told me about it last week. When I have a bit of time on my hands, it’s definitely what I’m doing.
30 Sep at 10:55 am
WHOAAAAA! It’s a new layout and CMS. Well, let’s hope this one will "hold". By the way, why did you "ditch" your blogmonster?
30 Sep at 1:11 pm
I’m soooo glad that the import/convert went well! Definitely a sign that Habari is a great CMS to use. Scott’s layout looks awesome, I think my favorite bit about it is the font and white-space. So clean and comfy. <3>
30 Sep at 4:00 pm
How cute is that No Avatar ninja? Deadly, that’s how :D Love the new layout as well, even if you have some tweaks left to do!