Serendipity Not

I spent (read wasted) a couple of hours this evening playing with a blogging system called Serendipity. While I’m quite certain that it’s got some great things going for it — really, it does — it’s got some serious growing pains to overcome before it’s anywhere near ready for prime time.

Things I really liked — easy, easy import of just about any other blog. And, in the comments, it’s got that little mixed up letter validation thing going on. (Really cool, and I’m going to find one of those for WordPress!) And, the UI is really, really well put together.

However, the plugins are only available at the Sourceforge CVS, and are not installer friendly. Each part of each plugin has to be downloaded individually. Miss a single file, or get it in the wrong place, and the whole thing crashes. And, many of the plugins require that you be able to install PEAR. That’s great, if you’re running your own server. Some of the PEAR requiring plugins have instructions to make them stand alone plugins, but, that process requires PEAR. Go figure.

Anyway, this site will remain WordPress-powered for the forseeable future.