Dotclear

About Dotclear

Overview

Dotclear is an open-source web publishing software published in 2003 by Olivier Meunier. A one man's project at first, Dotclear soon gathered a team comprising different personalities with various backgrounds.

The project's purpose is to provide a user-friendly tool allowing anyone to publish on the web, regardless of their technical skills.

Dotclear is a free software primarily designed for its users and regularly improved by their contributions. Everyone may use it and modify it according to the software license.

Dotclear.org

Here you can download Dotclear to install on your website. You will also find several useful resources such as:

  • A documentation to which any user can contribute.
  • A forum where you will get help or will help other users yourself.
  • The project tracker where users can submit suggestions for improvement.

Features

Dotclear possesses a rich functionality that makes it a high quality publishing tool, equaling and even outperforming other similar tools in some aspects. Beyond the core functionality, Dotclear is designed to provide the user with the most comfortable experience.

  • Easy publication - Entries are written in a feature-rich editor allowing the user to add formatting to heir content. A wysiwyg editor is also available and completes a toolbox designed for easy publication, so that you can fully focus on what you are writing.
  • Fully customizable theme - You don't know what HTML and CSS are? Don't panic, you can customize the default theme online in every aspect (colors, fonts, header image, etc.) without touching a single line of code. Customizing your site has never been so easy.
  • User-friendly administration - You should be able to write an entry quickly, without going through lengthy steps. The administration interface is easy to use and designed with the users in mind, regardless of their levels, without compromising on the functionality.
  • Flexible template system - You don't need to know PHP to modify the structure of your website — a pretty simple template language lets you easily make the changes you need to your site. You can still enable PHP parsing in your templates if you wish to. And editing your templates is made even easier by a dedicated editor directly available in the administration interface.
  • Media management - You can add any kind of file to the media manager. The media manager will help you find your files when you want to include them in an entry. You can also include music and video from external services (e.g. Youtube, Deezer, etc.), by simply specifying the URL of the page that hosts the media to be included.
  • Choose your input method - You can write entries using Wiki syntax or XHTML. Plugins can also add new input methods.
  • Flexible comment system - As every entry can receive comments, Dotclear lets you disable comments on individual entries or at the blog-level, with immediate effect or after the delay of your choice. You can naturally delete or modify comments.
  • Built-in antispam - To protect your blog from comment and trackback spam, the standard installation is provided with many filters and you can add more through plugins.
  • Localization - Each user may choose the language in which the administration interface is displayed. Each blog can also be displayed in any of the available languages. A language management tool lets you easily install and update languages in your installation.
  • Presentation widgets - The navigation elements of your blog can be customized through presentation widgets that you can place where you want them to be displayed, so you have full control on your layout. You can also use widgets to display all kinds of information (weather forecast, free text, rankings, etc.).
  • Themes and plugins - You can install plugins to extend your blog's functionality, and themes to change its design. You will find all those resources on Dotaddict.
  • Pages - You can add pages that are independent from the entry flow, for example to add information about yourself, legal statements or anything more fun.
  • Tags and categories - You can assign a category as well as an unlimited number of tags to each of your entries, to help your visitors navigate more easily in your website.
  • Automated installation - No more than two steps are required to install Dotclear and start writing your first entry.
  • Support for several database types - You have the right not be fond of MySQL databases, and that is why Dotclear supports PostgreSQL and SQLite as well as MySQL.
  • Multiblog - A single Dotclear installation natively allows you to create as many blogs as you like, be it one, ten or thousands, without requiring a third-party application.
  • Multi-user with permissions - You might not be the only person managing your blog(s). That is why you can add as many users as required and grant them permissions using a sophisticated permission management tool.
  • Standard compliant - We make every effort so that Dotclear complies not only to usual standards (HTML, CSS, etc.) but also to HTTP, to ensure maximum interoperability with existing and future tools.
  • Accessible - We ensure content accessibility for visitors using non traditional access means (mobile phones, refreshable Braille display, screen readers, PDAs, etc.).
  • Importing / exporting - Dotclear natively offers to import the content of your previous blog from older Dotclear version or from other blog applications. We regularly add new import modules. You can also export the content of your blog or your whole installation for backup purposes.
  • Naturally optimized for search engines - The pages generated by Dotclear are designed for optimal — and relevant! — search engine visibility. Options are also available if you want to control or prevent the indexation of your content.
  • Syndication feeds - Atom and RSS feeds allow aggregator users to track your blog updates from their favourite application.
  • Complete trackback support - Trackbacks let you react to other blog's entries and to notify those blogs almost automatically.
  • Full Unicode support - Unicode support allows you to publish texts using other alphabets than typical latin, so you can publish in Japanese, Russian, Arabic, etc. without changing any setting.
  • Extensible - Dotclear's design makes it simple to add plugins that modify up to the core functionality of the application. You can easily write and/or install plugins that will provide you with all the extra features you may need.
  • Performance and scalability - Dotclear is fast, regardless of the quantity of data. Dotclear stays fast with thousands of blogs and several hundred thousand comments. We had the opportunity to test it and optimize it on highly demanding platforms with a significant volume of data.
  • Twice free - Dotclear is free to download and free to use. Learn more.

Screenshots

The administration interface can be localized in any of the available languages.

Pre-requisite

Dotclear 2 requires a few specifications to work properly. Most of web hosting providers offer them. These specifications include:

PHP 8.1 or more recent version, with the following extensions:

  • mbstring
  • iconv
  • simpleXML et domXML
  • SPL

A supported database among the following:

  • PostgreSQL 8.0 minimum
  • MySQL 4.1 minimum avec InnoDB
  • SQLite

Authors / Thanks

They don't all write code but they are all related to Dotclear's destiny. Without them, their precious advice, their bright ideas, their contribution, Dotclear would simply not exist. They can't be thanked enough.

Dotclear team

Translators

  • Aina Chabert Ramon (Català)
  • Miguel A. Muñoz (español)
  • Benjamin Bank (Magyar)
  • Takafumi (日本語)
  • euskaraz (Occitan)
  • Nnidŷu (polski)
  • Luis Correia (Português)
  • Alain Fagot Béarez (Português, Brasil)
  • Дмитрий Ищенко (русский)
  • Veeven (Telugu)
  • Mitternacht (English)

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