I have been talking about a website rewrite for YEARS now and have never done it. I'm starting to consider using an existing blog engine.

I did not do the rewrite for a few reasons. Primarily, I did not have the full set of Java skills to do it until this past year. Eventually I sat down and decided to give the rewrite some serious thought. I wrote down a detailed list of features. Unfortunately there are tons and tons of blog engines, content management systems and portal containers already written out there. I can't get over the fact that writing my own would be a waste of time. It would take a very long time to match the functionality and quality of the existing systems, nobody else would really care about using it but me, and my time could be better spent on the scads of other programming projects I'd like to do at home.

Using an existing blog engine would let me get switched over right away, would offer better functionality, a nicer look & feel, and allow me to get past this road block.

I'm currently looking at JRoller which is used by Sun, IBM, and a bunch of other companies for their corporate blogs. It supports multiple users with their own blogs, and is written in Java. Now -- if I could only get effing OpenLDAP + PAM + Samba working together, maybe I'd have a server to set things up on. Argg...

One more thing. I'm also planning on downloading something called Collab.Net and installing it on one of my servers. It is similar to sourceforge, but Java, and used by Sun to host their java.net community, netbeans, open office, and a bunch of other companies use it too. I really like the idea of every project having it's own community website with everything in one spot for any developer to access. Security is fully customizable with roles so that users must log in to access sensitive data. Collab.Net even has templates to help enforce Agile processes if you want, and a neat new bug tracker called Scarab which has been under development for many years to replace Bugzilla. NetBeans has a plugin that can interface with Scarab. Collab.Net also has subversion integration, mailing list features, and tons of stuff. Basically you can set up sourceforge/java.net on your internal dev server. Enterprise edition is free for 15 users. The only issue is it MUST run on a fresh install of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and be on a dedicated server. I like it so much I might actually spend the $350 on RHEL.

Solaris 10 is now competing head to head with Red Hat. It supports multiple simultaneous "Linux Environments" that are compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and it's free. Their support fees are up to 50% less than the cost of Red Hat, and they maintain each version of their OS at priority 1 for 7 years. Red Hat maintains at priority 1 for 3 years, then you can keep using it with diminished OS support/updates or upgrade to the next version with no guarantee of backwards compatibility of your apps. Solaris is the only commercial OS that guarantees application compatibility between releases. I sound like a Solaris salesman.. I got most of that from this link. Really the only problem I have with Solaris is compatability with my hardware. They are compatible with commercial servers, but not just any hardware that is cost effective for me to buy for my PC. They are planning to switch their license to GPL, which would enable them to start making use of Linux drivers.