Lyceum Compared to WordPressMU?
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Any Lyceum users out there? I just stumbled across it as a possible alternative to WordPress MU. Lyceum’s database structure seems configured to give faster loads (WPMU load time has always driven me crazy, though it’s probably my own fault as administrator), while at the same time using WordPress (not MU) as its blog platform. I think I even read that it’s not as restrictive as WP with Java and Flash embeds, and thus sounds like it might approach Blogger in terms of easy functionality.
Like WPMU, it’s a multi-user set-up. From its “about” page:
Stand-alone, multi-user blog services make a lots of sense to us, and to a lot of other people. Lyceum is ibiblio’s contribution to this growing collection of tools. At its core, Lyceum is a minimally-featured enhancement to WordPress. We let WordPress do what it does well; we simply added nice things like smart administrative controls, an easy-to-use installer, enterprise-oriented database architecture, support for load-balancing, all the while focusing on flexibility, security and usability.
Curious to hear anybody’s experience of it. We launch our blogging slice at school very soon, so I need to decide to either stay with WPMU or jump ship and install Lyceum quickly.
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Hi there. I’m the developer of Lyceum, and I vote for Lyceum :).
Let me know if you have any questions about its capabilities. And if you do try it out, be sure to use the 1.0 branch and not 0.34.
[Reply]
John Bachir
22 Aug 07 at 11:26 am
I’m going to your blog now, John, to learn more. I think this might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, to quote Bogey. You seem much nicer than the support folks often are at WPMU….and that’s important.
[Reply]
Clay Burell
22 Aug 07 at 2:06 pm
Hi Clay, Last year, Bruce used Moveable Type MU on our school server. So I forwarded the link to him. We’ll both be checking it out. My class should be starting to blog in the next couple of weeks (I’ve only had two classes with them). I’m coming at blogs from a different angle this year. I’d love to discuss. I’ve been looking for something better than Google (hard to find), and this looks pretty good, especially if you have a relationship with the creator.
[Reply]
C. Watson
24 Aug 07 at 8:11 pm
Hi Chris ~ Stay tuned. I’ll be installing Lyceum on a server this weekend, probably, but still keeping WPMU on a different URL so I can compare. As for Blogger (that’s what you meant by “Google,” right?), its glaring weakness to me is that it offers no static pages like WP does. But WP offers no easy embeds of Flash, Java, widgets, and so forth. You’ve got to wonder when some solution will come that marries both strengths so that this is no longer an issue!
[Reply]
Clay Burell
24 Aug 07 at 8:15 pm
Thanks for sharing this Clay - looks interesting! I wonder if it’s possible to transfer Wordpress MU databases into it?
[Reply]
Doug Belshaw
26 Aug 07 at 9:50 am
Doug, anything I can do to be fractionally as useful as you are on your blog is my pleasure. Re: you q, I’m told Lyceum will have a hack to import WPMU blogs within the next week or two. I’ll update here if/when that happens.
[Reply]
Clay Burell
26 Aug 07 at 9:56 am