Update: It should be noted that this site is now running on Wordpress. The very latest version of WP fixes most of my problems and with the plugins available it suits my needs better.
I’ve been running this site for nearly a year now and I have learned a ton. I started out by using Wordpress as I had no idea what else to use. I quickly learned that the software left me with a lot to be desired and I was on the search for something better. After hearing a tip by the creator of PHP, Rasmus Lerdorf, I found Serendipity (S9Y). This script was exactly what I was looking for, even though I didn’t know it at the time.
S9Y is extremely powerful and yet easy to use. With Wordpress I felt strapped down to a single format and I could not expand without learning how to edit the backend code myself. 
This is not the case with Serendipity; you can overwrite nearly anything in the system just by creating a plugin. This allowed the geek in me to grasp the entire script without all that much work.
The non-geeks are asking themselves now: why they should use this instead of Wordpress or Movable Type? Simply put, you get more control. If you want to be able to control every aspect of your site then s9y is definitely the way to go. At the same time if you do not want to change anything the script works great out of the box. With every other system I have tried that is considered a blogging tool you’re extremely limited to just that one tiny function. They might work very well, but if you try to do anything else you will be hit with a brick wall.
One could go with a solution such as Drupal which is far more customizable then any of these other scripts, including S9Y. There is just one problem, it’s nearly impossible to get running for the first time in a single day. The few times I’ve tried to get a site working under Drupal it’s taken two to three days just to get a basic site up and running. It is a great solution if someone is trying to create a huge site, but for the small site it is just too complex.
An issue I see all of the time with other scripts, especially Wordpress, are database problems.
If a WP site hits the front page of dig or reddit its dead. This is due to the fact that Wordpress by default is not optimized for a ton of traffic. One can resolve this with a few plugins and some tweaking. Serendipity does not need this; by default it is optimized for receiving quite a bit of traffic. I’ve been able to take a few thousand requests in a 30 minute period with very little latency. I had more problems with apache than with the script itself and database.
Serendipity does have its own issues; most of which come from a language barrier. Most of the s9y development comes out of Germany by some extremely smart people.
This means that not only is the documentation by programmers who understand exactly how it works, but they also do not speak the language natively. I’ve been able to easily adapt as I have been reading this kind of material for years now. For the non-geek this may become an issue. As more people are using the script the better the documentation becomes.
I am always testing the latest and greatest popular scripts to see if something out there is better, I’ve yet to find anything. If I do find something better I would be the first to jump ship, it just does not exist.
Give Serendipity a try; it is truly a wonderful solution for managing online content.
Click Here to get started with Serendipity today.
Don’t want to run your own server? Give SuperSized a try. It offers all of the power of s9y without having to deal with hosting.
