The BileBlog

Freeroller’s service level has gone up a bit, and javablogs’ has dropped, so I think it’s now fair to have a fight between them. So to celebrate javablogs being down, I present to you the freeroller/javablogs shootout

Freeroller: Recently added entry is always consistent and up to date, and never shows duplicates.
Javablogs: Recently added is random, almost always has duplicates, and never up to date.

Freeroller: Randomly spits out 404’s, or refuses connections for a day or so. Rewards persistent users.
Javablogs: No such thing as a short downtime. It’s either up or down for days.

Freeroller: Shows reasonably accurate stats, and has smarter hit tracking.
Javablogs: Very easy to abuse and stats reset themselves depending on the phase of the moon.

Freeroller: Allows you to edit, add, and maintain your blog. Yay!
Javablogs: Allows you to add a blog.

Freeroller: Has only one kind of ’stats’ page, the front index page that shows most popular blog for the day, and latest entries.
Javablogs: Has an dazzling array of stats pages. Shame the numbers are random and reset themselves at whim.

Freeroller: No history views.
Javablogs: Can look back and find entries for any day.

Freeroller: No search.
Javablogs: Worthless search.

So in conclusion, I think freeroller wins out by a bit. The most telling revelation from this shootout though is that freeroller on the whole is a lot more honest. When it breaks, it breaks. Javablogs on the other hand seems more deceitful, it’ll lie to you while stabbing you in the back. It’ll smile cheerfully at you while feeding you useless irrelevant crap.

[update]: While working on some open source stuff, I thought of more points:

Freeroller: Source is available. Those who find it utterly intolerable are free to dive into that mess, should they feel stupid/brave/pretentious enough to do so.
Javablogs: Closed closed closed. Down with proprietory source! Code wants to be free! New economy! Viable business plan! Lalala!

Freeroller: Has davetest, who regularly tells us how crap freeroller actually is and how it needs to be restarted 5 times a day, and how worthless Tomcat is.
Javablogs: A mysterious black box, where downtime is never mentioned or spoken of or referred to. All rather inexplicable.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 20th, 2003 at 4:30 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.