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What is Geeklog?

Geeklog is an open-source Content Management System (CMS) used to create blogs and Web portals. It focuses on securing content, and is highly customizable via plug-ins and other add-ons. The product is flexible and can run on many different environments as it is written in PHP and supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, or MS SQL as the database backend. A natural in hosting environments, Geeklog is run by many sites because of its outstanding features as a Content Management System.

Implementing a CMS-based site is one of the easiest and most user-friendly ways to create an active and engaging website. A CMS application can help streamline the entire site design process, creating a blog or Web portal customized with your branding and ready able to support blog posts, multimedia content and ecommerce via plug-ins. Geeklog is one of those CMS products that is growing in popularity.

Originally, Geeklog was the CMS behind the popular web sites Securitygeeks and Newsgeeks. The platform proved so powerful that it was released under GPL license as an open source project. This PHP Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP)-scripted application sets itself apart by focusing on content security as well as creation. Installing Geeklog is an easy and rapid affair. The default install provides the user with a powerful blog engine platform, with full support for trackbacks, comments, spam protection, countless syndication features, and much more. Additionally, the platform supports plugins that provide image galleries, forums, visual elements and countless other options.

Geeklog is supported by a strong enthusiast community and help is just a few clicks away. The community also develops their own add-ons and plugins for a number of reasons and customized configurations. Geeklog’s base is made up of practical applications to specific problems and that comes from the community. When people are free to share ideas, improve and build on the work of others, and innovate in these realms, everybody wins. It is true not only for Geeklog, but in life that every solution comes from the sharing of a problem.

Users familiar with WordPress, Moveable Type and other publishing platforms will recognize Geeklog’s host of standard features: support for blog posts, a full comment system, tag and comment tracking, and multiple syndication formats (including Real Simple Syndication, or RSS, feeds).

The Secure CMS

Geeklog’s calls itself “The Secure CMS.” They wear the security badge on their sleeves. The impression is instant when an administrator logs in to the control panel and a security warning pops up. Needless to say, Geeklog really shines on its security features, standing apart from other CMS platforms when compared for these elements. Geeklog includes the standard user access controls and security software you would expect, but it also uses advanced logging to track all user and admin activity. In addition, access controls are customizable not only at the user account level, but for each piece of content (blog post, photos and other media, etc.). This can be very useful when setting up multiple user groups who need access to some, but not all, of the same content.

A CMS’s CMS

Geeklog is rather flexible and through its control panel, you can edit the configuration of your site quite easily. You can also modify the properties and configuration of other site elements like polls, spam settings and links. Geeklog will also connect to a mail server on the back side. That means you can easily configure a user-friendly integrated email experience for users right on your site.

Once it’s running, Geeklog is everything you’d want from a CMS. Any Geeklog user can submit a story to the page, so it’s multi-user friendly. For this reason it is very popular on content sites and community fed blogs. You have probably seen one of these sites in your browsing and not even know it. Some of the best and most well designed stuff is like that they may not get noticed to the casual observer.

Geeklog is free and open-source, and can be installed on both Linux- and Windows-based servers. It requires support for PHP (version 5.2.0 or higher) and MySQL (Structured Query Language) database management (version 4.1.2 or higher, or equivalent SQL software). Always check with your host for full plan details before adding this or any other third-party software to the root directory of your web server.