Habari Watch

Habari is currently under active development. Consequently, the state of the software (particularly in trunk) may be relatively fluid and may not always work as expected.

However, lots of clever, talented developers are only too willing to help you with any problems you may encounter in an effort to convert you to Habari and hopefully encourage you to tell all your friends to do the same.

Just in case their crystal balls are cloudy, please remember to include the following information when logging bugs

• Platform: Linux, Windows, MacOS, OpenSolaris
• Web Server: Apache, Lighttp, Nginx
• Database: MySQL, SQLite or Postgres (including version number)
• PHP version and configured extensions - a link to the output of phpinfo() is always very useful
• List of active plugins
• Habari version - latest stable version or trunk. If the latter, specify the exact SVN version number
• The theme you are using - always try to reproduce any issues with a core theme (K2 or Charcoal)
• The Web browser you are using
• Contents of '.htaccess'
• What happened or didn't happen
• What you expected to happen

Of course, not all users know what this information means let alone how to obtain it so Habari helpfully includes a handy 'System Information' report that displays all of this data.

Lots of people use Twitter and are often surprised if they just happen to mention Habari in passing, a helpful followup or reply miraculously appears courtesy of the Habari community.

There is also a growing number of people using Habari on the open source micro blogging platform - identi.ca. Just like Twitter, you can use hashtags (#Habari) and identi.ca also supports groups. Groups mean that you can direct a post to all members of the Habari group (even if you don't know them).

So, if you love freedom and have an account on identi.ca, please feel free to say 'Hello' and join the !Habari group.

The mission statement of the Habari group is:

'For people using, planning to use, curious about, liking, loving or even hating the Habari blogging platform.'

A common (and justified) criticism of Habari is the relative dearth of themes available compared with other popular, legacy blogging platforms.

So it's great to welcome another talented Web designer to the world of Habari. Amanda Moore has five stylish looking themes available for Habari. No need for me to include any screen shots as Amanda has already done that together with a 'Live Preview'.

I particularly like the P2 theme (ported from WordPress) which is a microblog style theme with a minimalist look and feel.

After a great deal of soul searching, I have decided, with a heavy heart, to migrate this blog to WordPress.

This will bring many untold benefits and advantages to 'Habari Watch'. For example, we will be able to enjoy a brand new theme every single day and we won't run out until Thursday July 23rd 2028.

The first theme I offer for your enjoyment and viewing pleasure is the classic, the original and the unsurpassed all-time best theme ever for WordPress - K2.

In addition, the vast wealth of WordPress plugins will be available thus enriching the reader experience for you, the reader of this humble blog.

Of course, this does not mean the end of Habari Watch. In fact, 'au contraire' as my French teacher used to say, as the ease of use of the WordPress 2,7 dashboard and the 'Quick Press' feature will re-energise much needed life back into this dormant blog.

Rest assured, I will continue to monitor and report on Habari development and bring all the exciting Habari news to you as it happens.

Some people claim that unless you 'eat your own dog food', you simply can not meaningfully review a piece of software.

To these people, I say: 'We all know what dogfood tastes like - it tastes bloody horrible.' Moreover, if you continue to eat your own dog food indefinitely, then two things will surely happen

• After 9 days, you will be hospitalised. As you foolishly didn't take out Permanent Health Insurance, you will lose your house and your wife will leave you (with the children).
• Your dog will die of starvation so you won't even have him for company so you will die a sad, lonely man, in abject poverty

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Houston, near Texas - March 30 2009.

Automattic, the company behind Akismet and WordPress took the tech-no-sphere by surprise today with the announcement of the shock acquisition of the Habari blogging platform.

Lord Matt Mullenweg (CEO of Automattic) explained the rationale for the move:

'There's a lot of synergy between the two blogging platforms. For a while now, we have been aware of increasing discontent from WP users with the complexity of the WordPress administration dashboard. Similarly, our large and loyal developer community are frustrated with the lack of extensibility of the plugin architecture and our 5 character indent coding standards.'

'We hope to merge elements of the minimalist, monochrome, stylish dashboard and integrate the best features of the Habari core to make WordPress 3.0 the leading open source blogging platform.'

Ironically, Habari was originally created back in January 2006 by disillusioned WordPress developers and it remains to be seen whether leading Habari figures will accept a place on the Auttomatic Web site and be forced to contribute an amusing profile picture and a witty mini-bio.

Sources embedded deep within the Habari meritocracy were furious at the move.

'The Habari community are aghast at the decision to sell out and get into bed with Matt. We were so close to releasing version 0.6 and finally conquering the world. This move smacks of bribery and deliberate sabotage. Most members of the Cabal are fiercely against the move and we intend to 'fork off' and start up another blogging engine using the latest technologies. Tomorrow.'

The shock move took the blogging community completely by surprise although an anonymous Valleywag source claimed the reason for the acquisition was more obvious

'WordPress aren't interested in any of the Habari features or the Monolith interface. They simply want Owen Winkler to do all the voiceovers on all the WordPress screencasts with that deep, booming authoritative voice. Oh and Ryan likes the pony.

[Update: Apologies to Scott Merrill who is the true owner of the 'deep, booming authoritative voice' but you really need the Habari 'comment-narration' plugin enabled for the full, glorious effect] --More--