1 Minx is rolling along again now after some delays - expect updates soon.

BIG problem with Wordpress - it only supports a single blog. So we'd have to install 70 copies of it. And 70 MySQL databases. And the Recent Posts thing here on Munuviana wouldn't work. And so on.

When they say "instand publishing with no rebuilding" they really mean that it rebuilds every time someone loads your page, which means it's faster for you but slower for your readers.

2 But what about the password protection for certain posts?

3 Pixy: you dont' need 70 DBs. All you have to do is change the table prefix in the config file. You can install in as many folders as you want, as long as you are not sharing DB tables even if you are sharing one SQL DB only.

Also the page generation issues are not a problem. Most decent servers, and I reckon that munuviana's would be more than decent, would be able to handle it. Server load is free with your hosting; disc space is a big issue.

What's Minx?

4 OF Jay - joy. So I can have one MySQL database with 70 sets of tables in it? (Actually more like 90, and growing...)

Minx is the blogging system I'm writing. It's specifically designed for handling communities of bloggers. It's also very very fast. Only problem is that development has been stalled the past two months because I was tied up with other projects.

5 Mr Mouse - Minx will support private blogs, and user groups. Do you really need to make specific posts password-protected, rather than a blog?

6 Oh, and server load ain't free - I'm paying for it! Now disk space, that's free. (I paid a $100 one-time fee for an extra 120GB drive in the MuNu server.)

7 Whoops. I should have said "my." Ultimately, right tools for the right needs, is the rule of the day.

8 On the subject of dynamic generation and server load: I loaded up a test version of Expression Engine, the new high-end system from the PMachine people. It takes half a second to generate a page. Which isn't much... Unless you have 200 blogs each averaging 1000 page-views a day.

(We currently have 70+ blogs, and mine, which isn't the most popular by a good margin, does average about 1000 page-views a day.)

So with 200 blogs, that's 200,000 pages, which takes 100,000 seconds... Which is about 27 hours.

Or I could install and maintain 70 copies of WordPress. I don't know how fast WordPress generates pages, but dynamic generation from an SQL database is a lot more CPU-intensive than serving up static pages - or even Minx's semi-static pages.

9 Ultimately, right tools for the right needs, is the rule of the day.

Too true. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the right tool, which is why I'm making one myself.

10 Pixy: You can do caching for the front pages of wordpress, most probly even for expression engine, using a simple cron job set to 1 minute each. The server I am sitting on hosts a plethora of wordpress blogs as well as the wordpress site itself, and together the server is estimated to handle more than insty's traffic in a day.

70 copies of wordpress sounds like a bunch, but there really isn't a load to maintain. In fact, there isn't almost anything to maintain in PHP myAdmin at all. It's there, and it sits pretty.

Depending on how many entries and queries you have for the front page, generation can take anywhere from a fifth of a second to half a second.

11 Jay: A cron job every minute? Updating 70+ blogs? Eek! And eww!

The database is probably not a problem, but wait until the next version of Wordpress comes out. I am not going to be interested in updating 70 installations of the software.

Now, those times of a fifth to half a second are interesting, because that's just the range I saw with Expression Engine. Minx updates faster than that on a new post, and produces pages far faster than that. Check out my blog for a Minxified MT blog - generation time is 5 to 7 milliseconds. (See the bottom of my right-hand sidebar. I've hacked MT to generate my pages the way Minx does.)

Page generation times of half a second are unsupportable. 70 independent software installations is unsupportable. And having to use cron jobs to overcome fundamental failings of the blogging tool is unsupportable.

I'm sure Wordpress is fine for a low-to-medium-volume blog - and for one which gets a lot of updates and/or comments, it's a better tool than Movable Type. But it's lousy if you want to run lots of blogs, and fatal if you run lots of blogs with lots of readers.

It's a good tool, from what I can tell. But for MuNu, it's a hacksaw, and we need a milling machine.

12 Gotcha on why you're working on Minx, and why MT in fact would work better for MuNu that WP would. Good luck with your project. Nice job on the render time too. :-D