Business Blog Consulting has a good review of the Grey Matter Blog Publishing platform that is really worth a read if you’re thinking through which is the best blogging platform for you. Rick describes Grey Matter in this way:
“It’s a server-side, PERL-based platform, like Movable Type, which means, among other things, it requires rebuilds of the archives when you make significant changes to the templates. Joni tells how this process early on crashed her then mom-and-pop web host’s servers and she was polited asked to take her web site elsewhere. (Bad blogger! Yikes!) Also, GreyMatter is no longer being actively developed by its principal developer, although there remains an active, die-hard community of plug-in and hack makers. It is also not so easy to install for novices. For those reasons, Joni suggests it’s better for those who like playing around with the underside of the tools and maybe not ideal for most corporate blog installations.”
Joni Mueller then goes on to review Grey Matter in what is one of the most comprehensive reviews I’ve seen of it. She starts off by writing:
“GreyMatter was one of the first Perl-driven blogging tools out there. That was back when the choices were Livejournal, Blogger and GreyMatter. The difference with GreyMatter was of course its power. At that time, it offered things that the other blog tools did not….”
Read the rest of the review at GreyMatter Blog Publishing Platform Review
Weblogs.about.com also has a good review of GreyMatter and writes:
“If you want a free, Perl-based blogging system, then Greymatter may be something you wish to check out. However, if you start longing for additional features that are not currently supported, you might have to wait a long time to get them – if at all. Otherwise, you’ll have to hunt – or beg someone – for hacks and mods.
Pros
• It is opensource (free!) and fully customizable.
• It can be used for personal, business, educational, and organizational purposes.
• It supports several useful features such as multiple authors, bookmarklets, comments, etc.
Cons
• Installation may prove to be challenging for “non-techie” users as technical knowledge is needed.
• Since the system runs on Perl, the “rebuilding” process when you edit or update can be slow.
• There is no existing RSS/Atom support.”
Read more of this review of GreyMatter.
CGI Resource also has a number of users mini reviews of GreyMatter that you might like to consider also.
