Latest version is 1.2.0 (released 24 April 2009), more info can be found in this post.

Short version:

Title: Open Blog
Version: 1.0.0
Description: Kick-ass Blog application built using the CodeIgniter PHP Framework
Homepage: http://www.open-blog.info
Download URL: http://www.open-blog.info/downloads/
Bug tracker: http://bugs.open-blog.info

What is it?

Open Blog is a free open source blogging platform built using the CodeIgniter PHP framework and released under GPL v3 license.
Development of Open Blog started on May 2008. As far as I know, at that time there was only 1 blogging platform available built using CodeIgniter named InkType.
In my opinion, the main problem with InkType was that it is missing features and the code isn’t very flexible or scalable so I decided to write my own system, which uses strict MVC patterns, modular design and it’s well structured.
In the beginning, Open Blog used my modules library but it wasn’t as good as it could be, so I decided to switch to Matchbox.

After many hours of hard work, the first private beta version was ready on September 2008. It wasn’t far away from the first public release but I didn’t have enough time to fix the bugs, create the installer, write the documentation, create the website and everything that is needed for the public release, so development went to sleep for 3 months or so.

At the end of December I had more free time and I thought it would be bad if all that effort went to nothing, so I decided to fix all the bugs that were left (and believe me, there were a lot more than I thought), add some new features, create the website and finish the first public release.

So finally, here it is - Open Blog 1.0.0 for the world to see.

In this year, I will work hard to improve and bring new functionality to it, so you can expect at least one release every three months (maintenance builds and bug fixes will of course be released more often).

What can it do?

* Friendly user interface - clean and easy to use user interface
* Easy to install - Open Blog comes with a PHP installer which makes installation and configuration very easy (you can get your blog up and running in just a few minutes)
* Multi language support - currently available in two languages (English and Slovene), but it can be easily translated into any language
* Templates support - you can easily change the look and feel of your blog by using Open Blog templating system (the default installation includes 5 attractive templates
* Open Source - Open Blog is being developed as open source software and released under the GPL v3 license so anyonce can help improve it
* Search engine friendly URLs - all URLs are search engine friendly
* Pages - your blog can contain unlimited number of static pages (for example “About” page)
* Links - add links to your favourite websites which will be visible to other visitors
* Feed support - open blog supports RSS and ATOM feeds for posts and comments
* Aministrator panel - powerful yet easy to use administration panel that makes administrating your blog very easy
* WYSIWYG editor - Open Blog includes TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor which makes formatting your posts and pages very simple
* Check for updates - you can use the “Information” page on your administrator panel to check if a new version of Open Blog is available
* Plug-ins - you can extend the functionality of your blog by developing or using one of the already developed plug-ins
* and much much more…

The full feature list will be availabe in the project documentation which unfortunately is still work in progress (documentation will be released with the next minor version).

Where can I test it?

You can test it on http://www.open-blog.info/demo/ using the details provided below (if you are too lazy, you could also check the screen shots on the website):

User name: admin
Password: demo

or

User name: user
Password: demo

Where can I get it:

The latest version of Open Blog can always be downloaded from the project’s website - http://www.open-blog.info.

Suggestions, Criticism, Feedback ... ?

Every suggestion, constructive criticism or feedback is more then welcome, so take some time to test it and tell us what you think.

Thank you,
Tomaž

Looks Promising, may install it on my server soon, just tried the demo so far, no faults I have seen, yet.

Dammit!  You’ve used the same icon set that I’m using for the new version of InkType! 

Good job man - and good luck with it!

What a coincidence, guess we have a same taste

Thank you for the good luck and same to you!

The demo looks very good so i tried to install on MAMP . I get the first screen but if I click on login ,archives, categories i get and error like “The requested URL /blog/user/login was not found on this server.”  Joomla and Wordpress work fine on the same install so i guess it’s working. So i tried on my prod CI app server which is SSL only . I get to the admin screen but any icon i click gives me a blank screen. What kind of setup would work best with this application ?

That’s strange.

I have tested it on different Linux, FreeBSD and Windows servers and didn’t have any problems.

Are you sure you have set the right Blog URL ?

Thank you for contribution: i test it… ciao!

Installation went nicely, one thing you might consider is asking the user for the username and password of an account that can create the database, that way, the installer if necessary can create it.

One problem i have come across (this could just be me, maybe i haven’t found where it is), i created 2 pages using the ‘new pages’ link in the admin dashboard, one page called ‘Test’ and the other called ‘Test2’, but when i go to the blog homepage where i installed it, i can’t find either of those 2 pages.

Is it just me? or are they really not being showed on the frontpage?

(this is on my test box)

Thank you for your input, I will consider this in the next release (automatic creation of the database).

And you are correct, pages don’t automatically show up in the navigation.

You need to add them manually via the “Manage Navigation” option in the Dashboard (for the page URL option, use something like this: /pages/your-page-title/ or in your case /pages/test-2/ - if you don’t know your page address, go to the “Manage Pages”).

ahh thanks for that, can you have sub-pages belonging to a main page?

Currently, you can’t create sub-pages (I don’t really see any benefit of having sub-pages).

You could just create another page and put the link to it on the other page which would be the “main page” and the effect would be the same