WordPress may be one of the best blogging platforms around today, but that hasn't stopped a worldwide community of developers from thinking they can do better. Desiring a more open environment where individuals can contribute and extend the project with their own work, they designed a platform called Habari to utilize a unique community participation model. Within this model, users whose contributions are consistently of a high quality are granted more privileges within the project. What has resulted from their efforts so far is a next-gen blogging platform that may eventually give WordPress a run for its money.
Some of the active developers of Habari include Michael Heilemann, Owen Winkler, Khaled Abou Alfa, Chris J. Davis, Scott Merrill, and Rich Bowen, to name a few. If you've been heavily involved in the WordPress community, then you may recognize some of these names already. What they, and a hundred or so other developers worldwide, are working on is a new blogging platform with a fresh design and backed up by clean code. As one developer says, "Habari is just as much a way of coding as it is a blogging platform."
What's most interesting about Habari is the way it integrates with third-party services. Instead of having to download a plugin for things like Flickr integration, for example, in Habari you can browse Flickr for a photo to add to your post just as some other blogging platforms allow you to browse your computer's hard drive. As you search for a photo, you have the option to enter in a tag to better locate the picture you need. In this way, Habari the platform performs very much like Zemanta the plugin, an add-in which allows for a similar type of interaction.
Searching Flickr in Habari:
Another example of this platform-to-cloud integration is how Habari lets you record video blogs. From within Habari itself, you can click a record button to record a video. When finished, the video can be posted directly to Viddler's video-sharing web site as well as to your blog itself.
Although Flickr and Viddler are the only two sites configured at the moment, they are only the beginning. Just as how a service like FriendFeed can pull in data streams from sites all over the social web, Habari will be able to access other media silos as well. And for anything that's not supported by the platform itself, there are still plugins available just as there are in WordPress. Currently, some of the more popular plugins include Disqus comments, Feedburner integration, Twitter posting, and a lifestreaming plugin (example).
Also like WordPress, Habari supports static pages, Atom publishing, tagging, multiple authors, and multiple sites under one install. There are even importers for Serendipty and WordPress available to help make the transition easier.
Because Habari is still a work-in-progress to some extent, it may not be ready for the newest of bloggers just yet. One day though, the developers hope to appeal to both them and blogging experts both. They want to address the pain points that make blogging difficult for new users, but they also want to bring the focus of blogging back to content creation. That's why the compose page is clean and simple by default (see below). They also want to focus on ways to make your blog the place where you actually blog, not the place where you have store videos and photos.
Habari wants you to just write:
The Habari Project has been around for a couple of years now, so you may have heard of it before. If not, don't worry - you're not alone. When one of the developers gave it a shoutout at this weekend's Blogorlando conference, neither the speaker nor many of the audience members had ever heard of it. "Come again?", and "How do you spell that?", people asked. And this was a blogging conference, mind you.
If you're looking to try a new blogging platform, Habari is ready for install today. You can learn more about the Habari Project on their homepage here: http://habariproject.org. If you're interested in getting involved, visit the community page here: http://wiki.habariproject.org/en/Getting_Involved.
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i think i gonna give it a try... look nice ... and i like the "fresh design and backed up by clean code"
Posted by: Edouard Duplessis | September 29, 2008 7:31 AM
Hmm, very interesting.. Lets see what this baby can do.
Posted by: ITrush | September 29, 2008 7:47 AM
Great, informative, balanced review.
I have using using Habari for six months and love it.
I think undoubtedly some bloggers are dissuaded from trying Habari by the 0.5 version and the 'beta' tag.
I agree with the need for 'better marketing' and this has been much discussed on the Habari mailing lists.
I tried to contribute, in my own little way, with a review of Habari 0.5 last week.
Posted by: Andy C | September 29, 2008 9:39 AM
Thank you for considering writing about Habari, Sarah.
In addition to the many noteworthy features, Habari is also built from grounds up to be powerful and easily extensible. Being adaptive of the OOP model, the powerful plugin API makes it easier for plugin developers to write plugins much more easily than for other tools.
The Flickr and Viddler silos are just two example plugins of what can be done with the Habari media silo API. Some other similar plugins, like Youtube silo, Diigo silo, Twitter silo and soon Vimeo silo are contributed by the community and available at the habari-extras repository.
Habari is built and improved by its great community. We are always delighted to hear everyone's opinions about their likes/dislikes about Habari and how it can be improved.
Posted by: Ali | September 29, 2008 10:03 AM
Hi,
Andraz from Zemanta here.
Actually we've met one of Habari guys at BlogWorld Expo last weekend and exchanged some ideas. Habari is quite impressive and we thought we could integrate Zemanta's suggestions there at some point. He left the business card, but I later noticed there is no personal mail or other data on it (just a general Habari business card).
so if you are out there - Habari project member that was at BlogWorld, Zemanta wants to talk to you :) Mail us! :)
Andraz Tori, Zemanta
Posted by: Andraz | September 29, 2008 10:15 AM
Thanks for writing about Habari, Sarah! We know Habari can be exactly what everyone puts into it, so the more people who are involved the better it will be.
Thanks again for taking the time to chat with us at blogOrlando, and hopefully with your help, next year Habari will be one of the early names in the list of blog tools presented.
Posted by: Owen | September 29, 2008 10:20 AM
Ringmaster (Owen Winkler) was at BlogWorld Expo. He shared that he had found a bunch of cool services we should work on integrating. (He's a core developer of Habari.)
This is his site: http://asymptomatic.net/.
Posted by: Morgante Pell | September 29, 2008 10:22 AM
What I've been looking for for a while is a next generation of forum software -- Vanilla was a step in the right direction, but it seems a bit stalled lately.
Posted by: Berislav Lopac | September 29, 2008 11:53 AM
I remember when Chris, Khaled and Michael suddenly left active participation in WP and began their own system. I was tempted by fact that a growing group of 'heavy weights' in the blogosphere could actually get enough traction to justify a move.
Unfortunately Habari is handicapped by more than it's poor (although meaningful) choice of name, and that is - momentum.
Reinventing the wheel is a difficult task, even if it was a better wheel. Getting traction against WordPress will be a difficult task. There has to a greater point of difference than better developer say and a few 'cool' features.
I wish them the best of luck.
Posted by: seriocomic | September 29, 2008 5:02 PM
umm. i remember having the link around but never got to check it out. i find it a point in between Tumblr and Wordpress right now. it not FastBlogging or Tumblelogging but it is not a True Blogging Platform either. at least not yet. i guess that will be cleared out when they get to version 1.0
I find it quite interesting nonetheless
Posted by: Avatar | September 29, 2008 5:43 PM
I think it bears repeating that Habari does not consider itself in direct competition to WordPress, or any other blog software. We're trying to scratch our own itches. If you share our itches, and Habari can scratch them for you, that's great! If another tool does everything you need it to do, that's okay with us, too.
The fundamental difference, in my mind, is this: when your blog tool fails to do what you want it to do, what options do you have? I can guarantee you that you have a voice within the Habari community, and can engage the development team to discuss openly your needs and desires. We might not have a feature in Habari because we simply didn't know it was one that was desired.
So if you like what you see in Habari, and would like to influence the direction it takes, simply join the mailing list(s) and speak up. We promise to engage you with passion and respect: we aren't going to implement every single idea put forward, but we also don't claim to have an exclusive market on new ideas.
As for the whole "it's not version 1.0" concern: so what? The version number is just an arbitrary designator to say "this version is more recent than these other, lower numbered versions." No, we haven't implemented all of the features we want to implement yet, but the core product is extremely stable, robust, and fast. The core database design has undergone very few major changes, and even when it does get revised our upgrade process is extremely easy.
Do please give Habari a try, whether you're "just a blogger" who hates writing code, or you're a seasoned developer. We value input from everyone.
Posted by: skippy | September 29, 2008 6:52 PM
I will keep using wordpress.
Posted by: gowers | September 29, 2008 7:07 PM
Whoa. I can't wait for this to develop. Until then, @gowers: agreed. I'll keep using wordpress.
Posted by: Kaitlin | September 29, 2008 8:45 PM
Habari looks to be a suitable alternative to Wordpress.
You nailed it when you said that Habari has been around for a couple of years and suffers for lack of marketing.
Lack of marketing is a problem for a lot of useful web products.
Bighow, the all-in-one publishing tool ( I lead the team) has been in development for 18 months now but suffers from lack of marketing and support.
Posted by: Pramit Singh | September 29, 2008 11:13 PM
I've been using Habari on a couple of blogs for a little while now and I heartily recommend it.
Posted by: Andrew | September 30, 2008 12:09 AM
No, sadly or otherwise, it almost certainly won't. One of the perverse strengths of WordPress is that its often out-dated mass of functions is accessible and comprehensible to the average programmer - Harbari is bleeding-edge OOP and not so hackable.
Posted by: Luigi | September 30, 2008 2:24 AM
Luigi, personally, my experience was the opposite. When I started using Habari I found it much easier to hack than WordPress.
Posted by: Michael C. Harris | September 30, 2008 3:00 AM
@Morgante Pell Thank you! I've sent Owen a mail to ask if he is the guy. We would very much like to see if there is ground for any kind of cooperation.
Andraz Tori, Zemanta
Posted by: Andraz Tori | September 30, 2008 3:17 AM
Have heavily invested in wordpress, however am willing to give this platform a try.
Should be Interesting
Posted by: Don Sydney | September 30, 2008 6:36 AM
i tried hard but just could not get mysql pdo to work on my server. without that habari was practically a no-go. :(
Posted by: sushubh | September 30, 2008 11:36 AM
I tried it on a test site. After a few years with WordPress it just wasn't intuitive and didn't have a bundle of themes to choose from.
There's not much you can't do with WordPress and themes are easy to change once you know your way around.
Posted by: Michael | October 1, 2008 5:11 AM
I think Habari has a long way to go yet but it's starting to look really good.
Posted by: Christopher Ross | October 4, 2008 11:57 AM
I'm testing it. That seems a good CMS but some "simple" features are missing. For example, I cannot insert rapidly a link in my text...
Posted by: Ramenos | October 6, 2008 7:40 AM
Just moving my Website from WordPress to Habari.
Habari is so much cleaner, easier to handle and is not spamming an update every two days.
Posted by: John | October 7, 2008 2:57 AM
What Habari does well at the moment is give you a space to write in and a button to publish without having to worry about all the options. It does everything that it must do and leaves the rest to plugins.
What it doesn't do so well at the moment is that there are not that many themes available and, coming from WordPress, you might find it necessary to right a little code to do some things you might think should be default, but aren't, for some good reasons.
If you have dabbled in themes in WordPress but couldn't gain traction Habari offers the opportunity to become a big player quickly so if you fancy yourself as a premium theme developer in future I think Habari is the place to be.
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