I was toying around with B2 Evolution which is used for blogging. Thought I try an alternate from the popular WordPress installation and see how it goes. On the first look, the B2 Evolution looks great and it has multiple section for your blogging needs. You can create blog A say for personal blogs, blog B for your hobbies, blog C for your photography, etc.

After I have installed it from Simple Script, the software installation system that came with Bluehost, I was kinda busy so didn’t do anything much about it. Eventually it was time for a software update. As most SQL software installation goes, there are updates to keep the software script running smoothly when bugs are uncovered and also to plug up the security holes found.

Using Simple Script to update should be snap. So far for most of my other trial and testing software, I have no problem updating using the automatic upgrade. In fact using the upgrade should be a cinch, and that’s the way it should be since most of us are not that technically minded and manually upgrading can be pretty daunting and tedious. By making it simple to upgrade your software it makes the script software useful.

Alas for B2Evolution, the upgrade didn’t go well. All I got was errors and the web page went down with a nasty warning saying your database is not up to date! Usually there is a back up of the previous version just in case the upgrade didn’t go well. Unfortunately rolling back to an earlier version didn’t work either as the damaged to the SQL database has happened.

The entire B2Evolution installation was now in a total disarray! Fortunately for me it was just an experimental installation and I could of course delete the SQL database and start fresh all over again. Were it to be a live running website that would be the end of the blogging content! That’s why backing up the SQL database is important.

So that’s it, I decided not to use B2Evolution for now. Seems like WordPress is still the de facto software installation to use when it comes CMS blogging website. Its robust nature, easy to configure and use still makes WordPress king of CMS blogging software.

There are many other blogging software such as TextPattern, NucleusCMS, Geeklog and not to mention CMS software that can be used for blogging like Joomla, Drupal, MODx, e107, Mambo, XOOPS, PHP-Nuke, etc.

But somehow, I still turn back to WordPress whenever creating a website for serious. Joomla and Drupal is still contender in my books and I did use them at one time.

For now, B2Evolution is out of my sights as a safe usable alternative for personal blogging website.