Minimalistic PHP blogging engine with focus on code quality

Question

I'm looking to set up a blog.

There are many "what's the best blogging engine?" questions on SO, but none totally focused on code quality.

I have done a lot of work with WordPress, and it's the #1 solution for many cases, no question. Its extendability and versatility are unmatched. But the code base is a mess, it has a huge memory footprint and extending it often isn't fun. Also, the back-end feels extremely slow on slightly older machines and becomes bearable only with Google Gears IMO. I'm getting less and less comfortable using it.

For that reason, I am looking for recommendations for a PHP-based blogging engine that is

• Simple, slim, and minimalistic in build

• Has good, structured, clean code, uses PHP5

• Has blogging basics: Tags, Categories, Comments

• Doesn't have to look good but needs to output good, semantic HTML / CSS so I can customize

• Supports some sort of spam control (Captcha and / or Akismet would be nice)

• I don't care whether it's database or file based

Optional:

• An API would be nice but is not mandatory

• Has a plugin system for extensions

Wet dream:

• Markdown support

Answer 1

Not sure exactly how many things it knocks off your list but I think Habari is worth a look.

They host a demo you can mess with if you want to check it out quickly.

Answer 2

I would take a look at Vanilla. Mainly it's a forums script, but it also has blogging features.

I has all the things you mentioned. Except is looks good enough:

• the entire code is about 500k
• it's well structured(MVC and well done), it supports extensions
• I'm not sure about tags(for sure they are supported by extensions if not in the core)
• looks good, have template mechanism, a few nice themes are available
• there are extensions to prevent spam, I don't know if an aksimet extension is available.
• it's mysql based

Optional: - don't know what you mean by apis - plugins and themes supported

Wet dream should be supported, at least in theory(on my old vanilla forum it worked in a manner I didn't want to, the code was html encoded, so html tags were not supported, including links, however i've seen them working on other forums), if not extensions could solve the problem.

Regarding the spam control and user comments posting you should use 2-3 plugins(Yes plugins are supported and are called Extensions).

Answer 3

There's a huge number of blogging engines written in PHP - all slightly different. For my purposes, I found Serendipity to be the most apposite.

C.