Yesterday I got an invitation from vox team, the new blog engine from six apart network and sined up there. What was my first impression about vox is “cool!!!”. I noticed many uptodate features. Beside those cool features I also feel lack of some necessary features as well. In this post I am going to figure out some good features, some missing features and some confusing features.
You can visit my vox blog at http://storyteller.vox.com
The Good
- Integration with Flickr, iStockPhoto, Photobucket
- Integration with Amazon. So that you can search for any item in
amazon and add it in your blog. But there is no place to add amazon
referral link or anything.
- Integration with YouTube.
- Personalized Collections
- A lot of colorful themes
- A web2.0 look and feel
- Use of AJAX in a smart way
- Use of ThickBoxes for adding content
- Easy navigation Panel
- Very good Neighbor Management
- Role based content display
- Thumbnail Management
- SpellChecker
- Strong Search Engine
- Powerfull Tagging
- Very good photo management
- SEO
- Choose Layout Style
- Draft Management
The Bad
- No way to add blogroll
- No way to add remote (hot linked) image
- Confusing Administration Panel and Collection Management, specially for Title Management and Sidebar object management.
- You cannot display collection objects in your frontpage but title of your collection
- No Password Protected post
- No customized comment spam management
- You cannot set external link for images
- Not sure about the size of uploaded contents. No information in appropriate place.
- Cannot Modify a part of the theme
The Ugly
- No Blogrolls (Whoa!!!, you can only connect to existing VOX members)
- No Hotlinking of Images
- It takes several hours to find out where I can change my blogs title.
If it is available in my profile instead of themes section, it will be
perfect.
- No HTML supported in personal details section.
- While commenting, you have to type HTML codes like <b> manually. Ni rich editor for commenting.
- No Keyboard shortcut while composing, like Ctrl+B
- I dont find any link for trackbacking to external post or from external post to my vox post.
- No public theme design documentation
- No post category, everything is tag based
So far this is my review on Vox. Vox seems extremely promising and it comes from Six apart who already have a huge blog engine development experience. Currently six aparts develops MovableType, Typepad, LiveJournal and Vox.
Comments
Like me, you need to spell check your posts before submitting. LOL.
In case you haven't heard Mena Trott on Inside the Net you should listen to it http://www.twit.tv/itn/mena_trott_of_six_apart
as it talks all about vox.
As this is early beta, I think most of your concerns will be addressed before the public release later this Fall.
Great assessment. I was frustrated with the inability to edit the HTML of my entries though. I think they need a simple text editor for entries, like the comments box. I hate the rich text editor. But I guess that's because I'm a web designer who codes by hand lol. :)
Hopefully most of these things will be improved before the official release, but I agree with your review! I really like the direction Vox is going in, so I don't want to be disappointed when it goes public! Did you send any of this to the feedback people?
the no hotlinking thing bothered me at first, but now i kinda like having the collection of images i upload from my computer at my disposal. not to mention the flickr integration. that's just awesome.
ik :-S ya randy, I type like a whirlwind and finally forget to spell check. Have you used the Bon Echo (Firefox 2.0) browser? It has the built in spell check capability. Right now I am using that.
Last night I had a talk with Patt, an exec from Six Apart and she ensured that vox is still in premature stage and all features will come in final release, probably more.
However, I think Six Apart guys should make it open source, or they should publish public API so that we, the contributors can also contribute in development.
Moodey Jen, Ya, I agree with you. A plain editor as an alternative way of writing will help.
MeganSorry, I didnt send them any feedback yet. Thanks for reminding me. That may work.
Matokie But if there is hotlinking, that would simplify all these process. I like Vox's flickr service very much, but when It was saying that it would access my private photos as well, I decided a "No"
@Hasin
I am not using Bon Echo yet, I have been testing Vista at work and rewritting a payroll database and summer time for our libraries is a very busy time.