This site is run by textpattern, I’ve used it a few times and I love it. In addition you may have read about my recent encounters with Joomla! .

This week I’m trying out Serendipity for another site and its quite a change. For a start I haven’t read a lot about it although there are a few places that I’ve notice it used (on Sara’s blog for example) and wondered about it. It turns out its templates use Smarty which is good for us as quite a few of our recent projects have (both woollyblanket, for its user management bit, and our recent experience creating playTAG.

First Impressions

Well the installation was a dream, which I kind of expected, but its great to see all the same and a nod to the team for that. Getting started with the admin side of things wasn’t too hard either – you install a plugin called “Spartacus” and then you are able to download and install any plugins and themes from their central respository. Its very convenient and perfect if you only have FTP access or just don’t want to mess about moving files from one place to another.

Getting a site running

The admin interface is quite simple – you add content items into categories in a way that will be familiar from other comparable CMS products. Getting some navigation to happen needed a selection of plugins but installing each one is pretty painless. The configuration screen shows the “sidebar” plugins in the location that they will appear followed by the “event” plugins which are the ones that modify the functionality.

What Next?

Well, I’m not posting the URL of the project I’m using Serendipity for just yet, because it’s not ready. I hope the suspense of wiating to find out what the site was and what I did to Serendipity in the process won’t be too much!