I am Stephanie Heck and I manage/ admin/ own a Linux dedicated hosting service. I would like to share a few comments and observations about Serendipity.
I serve about 60 commercial domains and about 50 more mom and pop acounts on a Fedora Redhat Box. For the record I use Ensim Control Panels, and I am saying this because I want the development team to know what kind of server enviroment I have. I support PHP and MySQL. I use a slightly modified version of the default Serendipity template at:
http://sheck.com/serendipity/
I recently installed Serendipity on one of my commercial domains as a demonstration of Good Quality Blogging Software to my customers. I was offering the B2 application before as part of the Ensim Power tools. I have one client using B2 Evolution. One more using movable type.
I really like the serendipity blogging software and I think that it is going places. I am impressed. I have a background in Linux administration and I have some moderate skills at PHP and XML
The WYSIWYG editor is a big hit with those who use word processors in the course of business. I had some of my customers look at it and give feedback. One of my contract webmasters is using a copy of Serendipity that I installed for him. He loves it. His comment was " This is head and shoulders over the previous blog B2".
There is a difference between the way that men and women use computers, and this is to the advantage of Serendipity because the interface of Serendipity is much cleaner in the administration panel and less confusing that most applications in its GUI structure. Women end users like it because the interface is not "geeky" and is understandable according to 4 of the female business owners who looked at Serendipities rear end admin area.
The Administrative Backend has a nice GUI. Serendipity would be outstanding as an intranet blog as well as in its internet capacity in that the WYSIWYG editor is ideal for clerical personnel. If the Syndication plugin was not used it would be wonderful on coprorate intranets for internal communication from management to the company rank and file..
Understand that most Linux shared hosting production servers run in safe mode and this creates the need for a few workarounds.
Be advised The install is fairly easy once you set up a blank database for the customer (MySQL) and reset a few file permissions and workaround a few safemode errors that are due in part to the install process delegating file ownership to root and apache rather than the domain owners UID.
The next time I install the Serendipity application I wil keep a detailed log of errors and solutions instead of doing quick hacks on the fly. I will forwar that log to the developers if they desire it.
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Most of these erors can be overcome with a few quick CHOWN and CHMOD commands from the root.
I still cant make the Export as PDF pluging run correctly but that is not so critical.
I am still learning about the fine points of Serendipity and when I am better familiar with it, I will be offering Serendipity hosting. Not yet, but give me a week or two. I will be offering Serendipity as an upgrade for my existing customers using B2. The purpose of this posting is not to advertize but to inform as to what I am doing with the Serendiity Software.
One of my customers have asked me if it is possible to inverse the sorting order of postings presenting the Oldest posting first, rather than the newest posting on the top of the blog page. This gentleman is a fairly well known author who wants to use a blog to post serial stories. I told him that I would pose the question to the developers as to Ascending or Descending posting order. There are some blog softwares that have this feature, however the WYSIWYG editor in Serendipity is far superior to those outdated blog products.
If I can offer any assictance to the development team in my capacity of a hosting provider as far as feedback and customer comments I will be happy to do so.
Steph
