Turning Off the Radio

Because I wrote the book on Radio UserLand, my decision to stop using the software on Workbench has raised a few eyebrows.

By tradition, the first thing a weblogger must do with new software is publish a vicious excoriation of the old software, warning others to keep away, like a courageous relief worker marking a land mine.

Textbook example: When Mark Pilgrim concluded that a Movable Type licensing change would have cost him $535, he declared the software a dead end, switched to WordPress, and donated $535 to its open source developers:

Movable Type 3.0 changes the rules, and prices me right out of the market. I do not have the freedom to run the program for any purpose; I only have the limited set of freedoms that Six Apart chooses to bestow upon me, and every new version seems to bestow fewer and fewer freedoms.

I migrated from Radio for more prosaic reasons. I need software that can handle the Drudge Retort, a server-hammering menace that in seven months has amassed 4,500 weblog entries and 110,000 visitor comments. Though Radio development has been hearteningly brought back to life by Steve Kirks and UserLand, it's a desktop tool that publishes Web content as static files. That's a poor fit for a psychotically active site with constant user contributions (or should that be a constantly active site with psychotic user contributions?).

I could have chosen a server-based program such as Movable Type, the subject of my next book, or Manila, the software I'm using to host 3,000 free weblogs on Buzzword.Com. But I work faster in PHP than I do in either Perl or UserTalk, the scripting languages required to extend those two programs, and I'm skeptical that either program can handle a million-comment-a-year onslaught.

The money I would have paid for Radio, $39.95 a year, will be spent on Guinness and hookers.

Wordzilla · Radio Userland · Php · Mysql · Movable Type · 2004/10/07 · 4 COMMENTS · Link

Comments

I'm a Hooker, and I like Guinness. Fancy taking me out for a drink? I could show you a good time on that $39

Seriously though, have you a contact for co-lo at the server farm where Buzzwords is? I want to put a Manila install some where. You said good (inexpensive) things about your host...

Steve at cybersaps dot com

Cheers IA

#1 · Steve Hooker · 2004/10/08

Not to worry, am now in contact with www.servermatrix.com

Seem like good people.

#2 · Steve Hooker · 2004/10/08

I'm happy with ServerMatrix so far. The prices are great and service has been good.

#3 · Rogers Cadenhead · 2004/10/08

"The money I would have paid for Radio, $39.95 a year, will be spent on Guinness and hookers".

Now what will grandmother Rita have to say about this?

#4 · Just Passing Through · 2005/04/20