I launched Blog 1.0 in January 2006. I chose Typo, but its first versions were not quite stable and often my blog was offline for hours and sometimes even days. Often it took minutes to load even though it was running on a beefy dedicated server. I’m still not sure if I have to “thank” lighttpd or Typo for the headaches, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience.

Then, after being offline for quite some time, I fell in love with Mephisto and I launched Blog 2.0 and it was a completely different experience! Mephisto was fast and stable and my only problem was that its development has been sporadic and then it stalled. Even many have cloned it on GitHub already, the main line is still progressing slowly and not benefiting from all that collaborative effort. Anyway, it worked OK for me.

Unfortunately, due to some problems with PayPal’s recurring billing, my hosting company vpsFarm canceled my account and I lost my blog. Pathetic, I know, but I didn’t have a copy of my customized Mephisto and I lost everything! Argh!

There’s now a third platform built with Ruby on Rails — Chameleon, but its development also stalled after running out of the initial enthusiasm. Similarly to Mephisto, it’s using Liquid templates. Typo is more active recently and has new leads, but I will it continue at this pace? I don’t know…

I am a big and loyal fan of Ruby on Rails, but the blogging platforms built with it lack incentive to move forward and fast being overshadowed by MovableType and WordPress. It makes the most sense those Ruby on Rails platforms to combine efforts into a single one, but I don’t kid myself that it will happen soon if ever. So, I looked into MovableType and WordPress for my Blog 3.0 and they are pretty much at par. Due to the fact that I know PHP and don’t know any Perl, I naturally chose WordPress. I am also looking forward to Version 2.7 of the platform, which seems really great.