What would you use to setup a site where anyone can sign up and create their own blog (or blogs) while keeping everything in one domain (or personalized subdomains).

I’m curious because I’ve worked with pmachine and EE for some time now but nothing is really coming to me that could accomplish this aside from some sort of server-side automation which I’m trying to avoid.

Drupal has this functionality native in the software.

Could you spot me a bit more info? I’m not familiar with this system.

Pretty simple.  Check out the spreadfirefox site…

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/

Notice that all the posts say ” “‘s blog.  That means each person has a separate blog they can post to and that post can show up on the front page.  The admin can allow anyone to sign up for an account and start posting, or blogs can be restricted to only selected bloggers.  The admin can allow all posts to go to the front page, or the system can be configured to allow only selected blogs to show up.  You can even elect to have no blog posts show up on the front page and instead show other types of content.  You can also see all the posts by one person by clicking on the link for that blogger. 

By default all the blogs use the same template, but there are modules where bloggers can actually select a preinstalled template specifically for their blog. 

The system can be pretty sweet.  Drupal is one of the better open source “CMS” projects.  There is a pretty good learning curve to the system, especially if you are an EE user because EE makes everything so easy.  If you are a developer, Drupal has an extension system much like that of EE.  Unfortunately the system is much more difficult in the creation of custom templates.

The best way to figure out if Drupal is for you is to install it and give it a test run.  I can’t really give you a bunch of info because I have not used it to its full potential.  The system takes a bit to learn, and in the hands of a savvy programmer it could be pretty powerful.

oh… and http://www.drupal.org is the site…

Wow, that’s really cool. So the ‘everyone gets a blog’ aspect to spreadfirefox is a Drupal feature? I’m going to have to check this out.

Blog hoster, would be your other choice.

Ok, here’s my list so far, just for posterity:

- Drupal
- Bloghoster (really well done)
- ELGG

Thanks for the feedback guys. Feel free to leave more info in this thread.

I’m interested in this subject toخ. (see here)

So I also look forward to hear from others. =)

Yikes… did you check the prices for bloghoster?  Drupal is freely available and has integrated forum functionality as well as a ton of modules.  Using Drupal after getting to know EE is painful though.

Edit:  Changed PHP to EE.

Well, some solutions are worth paying for - like EE for example. It all depends on the needs of the client.

In my case, I am willing to pay for the convenience of Bloghoster over Drupal because I would actually lose money in the time it would take me to learn Drupal. Bloghoster will come out of the box ready to go, and will meet my needs very snugly - this is worth much more than $400 dollars to me.

What I have learned since knowing EE is that free products are not always the best choices. So if I find a product that best covers my needs I’m fine with paying for it.

But that doesn’t mean that bloghoster is the proper product for ma, I’m still researching.

Depends on the needs.  I have an application in mind that would require a hosted blog solution, but I would need the ability to map blogs to domain names.  So if someone has a domain name they want to use, I can accomodate that.  The Bloghoster license states you must purchase a separate license for each domain.  This would not be cost effective for my application, but that may not be the case for yours.  This is where licensing of proprietary solutions gets to be a problem for more specific needs.

That said, Drupal will not accomadate this either, so I am left with having to create my own solution.  That is unless you guys have other suggestions

Hmmm… after reading the forums I may be wrong… it looks like you can use multiple domains if you are only using one installation.

The ideal solution would be using EE’s community module, which is a work in progress =)

What do you think the right search term (google) would be for what we are looking for?

Heh… honestly I am falling in line with you guys.  I think Bloghoster would be the ticket as long as they allow one installation to work multiple domains which it sounds like they do.

I would love to use an EE module… but the community module is probably at least a year out there.  I suppose you could possibly create your own module, but this is not going to address the licensing concerns.

Here are 2 more choices (Thanks 2 google): 

1.Comdev Web Blogger

2. Blog System

Er- well, there’s always Livejournal.org - CVS repository - I know 6 Apart bought it up, but the main code was gpl.  And then Wordpress has its multiuser version- which still sounds like it’s finding its legs, but it’s the backbone for Wordpress.com’s blog hosting service.

LJ isn’t in php, but WP is, so it might be fairly easy to get around.