Well I'm changing blog systems to BLOG:CMS because Movable Type has gone commercial. I chose BLOG:CMS because it was based on Nucleus (which was open source (aka, non commercial) and has a nifty little importer feature where I can import all my blog entries from MovableType and thus.. not lose anything. BLOG:CMS was nice as well because it had a number of built in skins and templates and plugins, so without waiting for JMac to figure out how to port my beautiful old blog template over to a new one, I can at least have a somewhat functional skin right off the bat. There are also a number of nifty addins that BLOG:CMS has by default that would be difficult in MovableType.

In the expanded version of this post you will see the shameless plug by the authors of BLOG:CMS for the software as well as a feature list.Thank you :-)

BLOG:CMS XE contains advanced skins, 45 pre-configured plugins, fully compatible with table prefix, advanced CSS files, and much more. It generates XHTML 1.0 STRICT valid code.

Plugins included in BLOG:CMS v3.0 XE:

• NP_BlogWithOffset - display blog per page.
• NP_Calendar - calendar with links to days you've posted.
• NP_Chat - minichat / shoutbox plugin.
• NP_CommentControl - comment control against trolls and spammers.
• NP_CommentEditLink - edit all comments directly from your blog.
• NP_CommentPreview - preview comments before being posted.
• NP_CSS - CSS Style Switcher.
• NP_EditControls - htmlArea - WYSIWYG editor for Nucleus CMS.
• NP_FancierURL - URLs like /item/this-is-a-title instead of /?itemid=123.
• NP_FancyText - phpBB like formatting, threaded discussion for comments, smilies.
• NP_GZip - GZip your website to save bandtwith.
• NP_LatestComments - shows last 5 comments made.
• NP_LatestDisc - shows last 5 discussions in 5 different articles.
• NP_LatestItems - shows last 5 articles posted.
• NP_Log - simple log for your blog.
• NP_MailToAFriend - email an article.
• NP_MostKarma - shows posts with most karma points.
• NP_MostPopular - shows most commented posts.
• NP_MostViewed - shows most viewed posts.
• NP_Newsfeed - blogroll, works for your own blog too!
• NP_OffsetArticles - links to next/previous 10 articles, titles, latest commets.
• NP_OffsetEntriesLink - jump to next/previous set of articles.
• NP_PageLinkList - go to page 1,2,3, etc.
• NP_PDF - export article to PDF.
• NP_Poll - run polls with multiple questions.
• NP_Print - print your article.
• NP_Random - display a random quote.
• NP_Referrer - track who is linking to your website.
• NP_Related - show local and google search results, related to your article.
• NP_RSSBlog - RSS feed of last 20 comments made.
• NP_RSSItem - RSS feed of current item.
• NP_SearchHighlight - highhlight search results for users that came from google.com and like.
• NP_Table - create tables, lists, header files online.
• NP_TrackBack - trackback for your articles.
• NP_Viewed - article views counter.
• NP_Weather - shows weather forecast for next 3 days + current weather.
• NP_WIE - who is online plugin.
• NP_WordCount - count words in your article.
• NP_XMLTools - RSS feed of complete articles, or only extracts.