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WordPress vs. Serendipity

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My search for a next generation blogging platform for Digital Musings continues. I have been testing out the very popular WordPress blogging engine for the past couple of weeks. I can offer the following observations to anyone confronting a blogging platform choice.

What I liked

WordPress was quite easy to install and on par with Serendipity and definitely far easier than Movable Type (MT).

Like MT, it has quite an attractive user interface and is much more pleasing to the eye than the more utilitarian interface for Serendipity.

WordPress enjoys enormous support in terms of themes and plugins which is very exciting as there is always something new being developed for it.

Lastly, WordPress makes it quite easy to change your theme or template as it has a built in interface for modifying your template files directly from the administrative interface.

What I did not like

Compared with Serendipity, WordPress requires you to manually edit your template file if you want to make any changes to your sidebar (assuming a multi-column layout) or if you want to add any plugins into that section of your layout. This is not always easy for a non-technical user and the risk of accidentally deleting an essential part of the template is always present. In contrast, Serendipity has a very good plugin management system to control what plugins are installed in the sidebar and how they are ordered.

Secondly and most importantly and similarly with MT, I encountered a lot of compatibility issues between WordPress and how PHP is implemented on my hosted server. My hosting company has decided to implement PHP as CGI and this created all manner of problems with WordPress and its plugins. In contrast, Serendipity has no issues at all in supporting PHP as CGI.

Another flaky aspect of WordPress is its options for turning on permalinks. Permalinks are off by default in WordPress and as soon as I enabled them, I got the dreaded "Internal Server Error". It would seem that I'm not alone with this problem just by Googling this issue. On the hand, Serendipity supports permalinks straight out of the box without any fuss.

Summary

It looks like I will be sticking with Serendipity even though it has a smaller range of plugins available than WP or MT at this stage but it plain just works. No fuss, no hacking of code etc. It works ! So in terms of peace of mind, Serendipity wins hands down. I would rather spend my time blogging rather than getting my blog to work.

UPDATE [May 2007] : Another feature which weighs in favour of Serendipity is the ease of upgrading the engine. Upgrading Serendipity is far easier than upgrading Wordpress. Here's the Wordpress upgrading process in summarised form :

1. Backup Database Tables and Files including .htaccess and any customisations
2. Deactivate Plugins
3. Overwrite Files
4. Run the upgrade script
5. Reactivate Plugins one by one

And here's the corresponding Serendipity upgrade process :

1. Backup Database Tables and Files
2. Overwrite Files

The Serendipity upgrade script runs automatically as soon as you access your blog and there's no need to back up any customisations as these are all stored separately from the core Serendipity files.

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Posted by:: Chris at 09.11.2005 / 05:10
Last updated 31.07.2010

Category:: Technology

Aug 20, 17:28

Wordpress or Serendipity ?
Recently when I moved this domain away from TYPO3, I wanted to use it for a blog. I thought I had already decided on the engine to use, but various factors left me mulling for days on the final decision. ...

Justin 07.12.2005 / 03:05

Thanks for your summary of the two systems. I have been debating between WP and Serendipity.
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Chris 07.12.2005 / 03:12

Serendipity is very good and very stable and quite an active community of users and developers helping each other out. The only downside is that they are not a big as WP or MT, hence it doesn't have the same range of plugins. But it does have quite a lot of plugins.
(Reply)

Rhea Drysdale 18.07.2007 / 12:25

It looks like you're still with Serendipity, are you still happy with it rather than WP? I'm trying to determine whether to move a Serendipity powered blog to WP simply bc I'm more familiar with it, but I have felt the WP setup woes and feel my time might be better spent simply learning Serendipity. Thank you!
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Chris 14.08.2007 / 03:24

Hi Rhea,

Sorry for the delayed reply ! Didn't see your comment ! Yes, I decided to stick with Serendipity and I have also tried WP with a different blog. On the whole, I prefer Serendipity though WP has a much better range of templates. Serendipity has been working really well for me and great support from the development team.

cheers,

Chris
(Reply)

Dan 12.08.2007 / 23:53

Hi Chris,
Nice rundown.. I've been using Wordpress for a while on various sites and its quite nice, i agree on the not being able to edit templates and whatnot, so I will be trying out Serendipity shortly on a couple of sites to see how it goes, Thanks again for the review

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Chris 14.08.2007 / 03:26

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your comments ! Good luck with Serendipity. You'll miss the big range of templates that WP has but I think on the balance, Serendipity is a better blogging platform.

cheers,

Chris
(Reply)

Rhea Drysdale 18.08.2007 / 16:48

Chris,

Thanks for the response and no worries on the delay. I'm definitely going to give Serendipity a go after some Wordpress update issues and your feedback!
(Reply)

Levi Figueira 17.09.2007 / 12:11

My WP update process:

1. Click the "Instant Upgrade" button!
2. Done!

This is a very cool plugin that you can find here:
http://www.zirona.com/software/wordpress-instant-upgrade

And that just adds to the feature completeness of WP, and the reason why I can't think of changing to any other engine: it's community base and plugin collection!

I have use that plugin on the last 2 upgrades with no problems whatsoever. I won't use it on the next major upgrade though. But for those quick security upgrades, this is a great tool, trust me!

Cheers!
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kelly 10.08.2008 / 07:49

Upgrade to WP 2.6 was a failure for me as it did not tell me beforehand which plugins were incompatible. I did double-check and could find none of the plugins I used as incompatible. So the white screen of death... sigh...

Thanks for this review. I had been testing all kinds of blog platforms and I am ding-donging between B2evolution or Serendipity. Your review will help me a step closer to what I'd finally use.
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Chris 11.08.2008 / 23:46

Thanks for dropping by Kelly. It's certainly not an easy choice to make in terms of blogging platforms.
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hk mini store 10.07.2009 / 15:53

Upgrade to WP 2.6 was a failure for me as it did not tell me beforehand which plugins were incompatible. I
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Joseph 29.01.2010 / 02:04

It looks like a nice blogging platform but i'm always nervous with transitions. How easy is it to import your old wordpress posts into a new serendipity install?
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