A week with Habari
So it’s been a week since I installed Habari (my installation tells me 8 days? okay) and here are my thoughts so far.
Pros
- It’s light
- Habari’s base install comes out to be about 2.5mb compared to 4.5mb for WordPress and 15mb for Movable Type.
- It’s database independent
- As mentioned a a previous post, I can’t really afford MySQL, so Habari is perfect because it supports SQLite.
- It has a simple but aesthetically pleasing backend
- Controls are done through a JavaScript dropdown menu that can be accessed using keyboard shortcuts.
- The code is readable
- One of the things I love doing when I get something is to tear it to shreds and see what’s inside. I love how easy to read Habari’s code is, meaning I can hack it that much faster or easily. I even learn new PHP techniques from reading the code. When I look at WordPress’ (monstrous) code I actually have to, well, decode it before I can understand it.
Cons
- (Not-so-much) Lack of Functionality
- The user base isn’t very large, and as such the development base is even smaller. There aren’t a lot of plugins available, but the important ones are all there.
- Lack of Themes
- Same thing as functionality, not a lot of people, so not a lot of themes being written. Whereas WordPress has a few hundred themes, if not more, floating around the net, there are maybe twenty to thirty themes for Habari total. Not really a problem for me, as I prefer custom theming, but not everyone can design websites.
vs. WordPress
Before I noticed my hosting bill racking up too quickly, I had Flow of Logic running on WordPress. Here’s what I’ve noticed in comparing the two.
- Backend
- WordPress has a very large backend - different parts of the admin area are spread out all over the place, while Habari has a much more centralized backend - every part of the admin area is accessible from the little dropdown menu in the upper left corner.
- Theming
- Habari uses a lot of PHP5 in it’s theming - for example, getting the title of a post would use $post->title, whereas WordPress uses a lot of proprietary methods - for example, the equivalent of the previous example would be the_title(). This ties back into Habari’s readability, as mentioned before
- Community
- Habari has a pretty small community, while WordPress has a pretty large one. If I had a problem with WordPress, chances are I could Google it and I would find the solution, but with Habari I might have to submit it to the problem tracker.
You can read more about Habari at Habari’s website or try out the demo (username/password are demo/demo)
If you have any problems, you may want to try asking in the IRC channel; it's #habari on freenode. I'm pretty new to it aswell, trying to make a theme at the moment :)
Just wondering, is there a plugin you're using to put that feed button in the top right?
Welcome to Habari ! Thanks for the overview of your first week with Habari.
Interestingly, I think the small community is both a con - as you say, the theme and plugin coverage is correspondingly small, and a pro - yes, you can Google for the answer to a WP problem, but you can actually jump on #habari IRC and talk to people who you know, and who know you, in order to solve your issues. Being small, individuals can still have a lot of impact.
Really nice theme, by the way.
Welcome to Habari. Enjoy the ride.
Interesting to read a review from a developer perspective.
You have done well by posting your various issues to the -user mailing lists.
Great theme BTW. Very distinctive and professional.
Ben, are you talking about the Feed Icon where it says "Subscribe"? For that I'm just using a CSS Background image.
hi.. i'm just a regular blogger with no knowledge about web programming or database. i just wanna ask you about habari. you said it's 'databaseless' did you mean that i can install it in any free hosting that support php and don't support mysql? or that hosting had to have sqlite program in order for habari to work?