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Sweetcron is the latest new shiny toy in self-hosted lifestreaming. Sweetcrons main selling point is the ability to store your lifestreaming data on your own server,and on your own domain. There was much awaited anticipation of this application. It has garnered lots of publicity for the past few months. I finally installed Sweetcron and took it for a test drive..
I was extremely unimpressed. The hype sold me, but that’s about the only thing that I can say will sell me about this application, or at least in its current stages.
Most of us who attempt to set up self-hosted lifestreams must be comfortable with php, and for the most part, rely on plugins in conjuncture with some type of blogging platform, usually wordpress. While I expected Sweetcron to be so much more, it’s pretty much a stripped down wordpress blog with tags and the capability of importing rss. In it’s current state it does not look very secure. The php scripts running it, look off the shelf and possibly highly exploitable.
It’s in pretty rough shape: nowhere near a 1.0 release. The architecture and design decisions come off as amateurish as well. I wouldn’t trust it with my data. – Mark Trapp
I agree with Mark Trapp’s comment quoted above, from this FriendFeed thread. I also would be very cautious of the data you input into Sweetcron at its present stages. This application needs some serious development. It could be your own personal FriendFeed, without the friends, but it’s simply not.
What Sweetcron does have going for them is the fact it’s open source and easily customizable. At least now, others can improve on this application where Sweetcron seems to have failed.
Under the hood, it runs on php and mysql. Setting it up was relatively easy. Create your database, modify your php files and it’s installed. The control panel is so bare-bones it could not be any more basic.
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The dashboard is minimal. It’s pretty self explanatory from the screen shot. You can do 3 things here.
- Write: Post directly to your lifestream
- View Items: Delete, edit, unpublish/publish.
- Feeds: Add or delete rss feeds.
You can also post directly to your lifestream. I guess this could be useful if you were extremely bored. This is what Twitter is for. This sort of defeats the purpose since you more then likely would have tweets imported in via rss.
This is your options page, or should I say lack of options page.
Last but not least, Smartcron has a link for comments, but failed to implement a commenting system. It’s great they suggest using Disqus for comments, but after all this application is built on mysql and php! Commenting could have been easily implemented.
At this stage in the game, there is nothing to see here folks. My advice is if your looking for a service like this, set up a self-hosted wordpress blog, and customize it.
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I'm not self hosted (yet) but all the choices of various plug-ins, templates, designs, etc., is just way too much information overload for me. I'm currently using a Wordpress.com hosted blog and the admin panel is terrible! The formatting takes FOREVER so I use myselfl finding the WYSIWYG editor. I also agree with the creator's suggestion of Disqus — given there's Disquis community, too. Though I do agree, PHP is a tad intimidating for me. I can't wait to get mine up and running. Thanks for this piece, Mike
I thought it was ok. Nothing grand I'd tell someone to use it. But after “using” it for a while, I agree that you'd be better off just skinning your own WP theme where you can just add lifestream widgets instead.
An “A” for effort but the final grade I'd give a “C-”.
I have to say I disagree. I think that Yongfook created a great self hosted platform. The developer has stated that he was not trying to create another Wordpress-esk blog platform. Like you said this platform is super customizable which makes it a great technical project not a mainstream platform, exactly what the developer meant to create. I set it up for fun and it was very easy, and I'm happy with the result.
http://ryanagraves.com/sweetcron
Hrrmm…
Why not back up your claims of it being “possibly exploitable” with some actual evidence. I'd be interested to see that. No system is perfect – Wordpress too has had its fair share of exploits.
Seems like you're just ranting for the sake of it right now (this is an ugly trait in conversational blogging – say something bad about something that gets positive press because if you do you're guaranteed pageviews; and one of the very reasons why I feel the personal blog is dying – people are just out to get their content noticed).
At this stage I'm really happy with Sweetcron. It's exactly what I set out to create – an extensible platform that can help you to manage feeds, import items and display them nicely in a theme of your (or someone else's) creation. You could probably write some kind of massive, convoluted plugin that does the same for Wordpress, but you'd still have Wordpress as your base, which I think for personal publishing provides a whole lot of bloated stuff that lifestreamers don't need. Sweetcron is clean, based on a standard MVC architecture (Wordpress is proprietary) and people have started jumping right in and customising it, despite my pretty piss-poor attempt at documentation
Wordpress has the benefit of a pedigree of tens of thousands of people who understand how to hack it to death. Sweetcron will have that in time 
You make an interesting point on commenting – that's *exactly* the kind of bloated functionality that I think is better left to specialised 3rd parties such as Disqus. With Wordpress, if I want to update the comment functionality, or if there is some kind of new comment exploit going around, I'm going to have to download an upgrade and upload it. This is a tedious process. By outsourcing all this functionality you gain the benefit of a team (disqus) who spend 24 hours a day making sure you are using the most current, most effective software for that particular purpose. I made a blog post about this and you should take a look at it:
http://www.yongfook.com/post/view/69/10-reasons...
And actually it looks like you kind of agree with me – you're using disqus on your blog!
After using Wordpress for a very, very long time I found that being able to manage comments in the CMS was not as high a value proposition as outsourcing the functionality to a team who are producing great software (a la disqus) with better commenting functionality than Wordpress supports by default. For that reason I think there is no point in *any* personal publishing software these days having support for some kind of proprietary commenting system as long as tools like disqus exist – lets just benefit from the hard work of teams who work night and day to solve a specific problem.
Cheers
Jon
I'm not self hosted (yet) but all the choices of various plug-ins, templates, designs, etc., is just way too much information overload for me. I'm currently using a Wordpress.com hosted blog and the admin panel is terrible! The formatting takes FOREVER so I use myselfl finding the WYSIWYG editor. I also agree with the creator's suggestion of Disqus, since there's a Disqus community, as well. Though I do agree, PHP is a tad intimidating for me. I can't wait to get mine up and running. Thanks for this piece, Mike
I thought it was ok. Nothing grand I'd tell someone to use it. But after “using” it for a while, I agree that you'd be better off just skinning your own WP theme where you can just add lifestream widgets instead.
An “A” for effort but the final grade I'd give a “C-”.
I have to say I disagree. I think that Yongfook created a great self hosted platform. The developer has stated that he was not trying to create another Wordpress-esk blog platform. Like you said this platform is super customizable which makes it a great technical project not a mainstream platform, exactly what the developer meant to create. I set it up for fun and it was very easy, and I'm happy with the result.
http://ryanagraves.com/sweetcron
Hrrmm…
Why not back up your claims of it being “possibly exploitable” with some actual evidence. I'd be interested to see that. No system is perfect – Wordpress too has had its fair share of exploits.
Seems like you're just ranting for the sake of it right now (this is an ugly trait in conversational blogging – say something bad about something that gets positive press because if you do you're guaranteed pageviews; and one of the very reasons why I feel the personal blog is dying – people are just out to get their content noticed).
At this stage I'm really happy with Sweetcron. It's exactly what I set out to create – an extensible platform that can help you to manage feeds, import items and display them nicely in a theme of your (or someone else's) creation. You could probably write some kind of massive, convoluted plugin that does the same for Wordpress, but you'd still have Wordpress as your base, which I think for personal publishing provides a whole lot of bloated stuff that lifestreamers don't need. Sweetcron is clean, based on a standard MVC architecture (Wordpress is proprietary) and people have started jumping right in and customising it, despite my pretty piss-poor attempt at documentation
Wordpress has the benefit of a pedigree of tens of thousands of people who understand how to hack it to death. Sweetcron will have that in time 
You make an interesting point on commenting – that's *exactly* the kind of bloated functionality that I think is better left to specialised 3rd parties such as Disqus. With Wordpress, if I want to update the comment functionality, or if there is some kind of new comment exploit going around, I'm going to have to download an upgrade and upload it. This is a tedious process. By outsourcing all this functionality you gain the benefit of a team (disqus) who spend 24 hours a day making sure you are using the most current, most effective software for that particular purpose. I made a blog post about this and you should take a look at it:
http://www.yongfook.com/post/view/69/10-reasons...
And actually it looks like you kind of agree with me – you're using disqus on your blog!
After using Wordpress for a very, very long time I found that being able to manage comments in the CMS was not as high a value proposition as outsourcing the functionality to a team who are producing great software (a la disqus) with better commenting functionality than Wordpress supports by default. For that reason I think there is no point in *any* personal publishing software these days having support for some kind of proprietary commenting system as long as tools like disqus exist – lets just benefit from the hard work of teams who work night and day to solve a specific problem.
Cheers
Jon
Sweetcron works for the most part for me. I haven't seen any obviously exploitable code. I did have to hack some parts. Word limiting which didn't work for Japanese text so I ended up with items that were too big in the lifestream. How the block types (images, link, etc) needed to be tweaked in code as it was specific to digg.com (if you don't use twitter then you'll need to tweak that too). Any item with a photo was marked as a photo block, even external blog posts. Anyway, It could use some polish but it works ok and the concept is good. Timewise it was better for me than writing it myself.
Sweetcron works for the most part for me. I haven't seen any obviously exploitable code. I did have to hack some parts. Word limiting which didn't work for Japanese text so I ended up with items that were too big in the lifestream. How the block types (images, link, etc) needed to be tweaked in code as it was specific to digg.com (if you don't use twitter then you'll need to tweak that too). Any item with a photo was marked as a photo block, even external blog posts. Anyway, It could use some polish but it works ok and the concept is good. Timewise it was better for me than writing it myself.
[...] SweetCron is looking like Sweetcrap – Mike Fruchter [...]
things “appearing” as photos etc when you don't want them to be is entirely because of the theme. There is a rule in the theme that says “if the item has a photo, display it as a photo box” – in your case you just need to get a bit more granular and say “do the above, but only if it is from a specific domain”, which you can do using the API.
In retrospect, the Boxy But Good theme that everyone loves so much is an inappropriate theme to bundle with the download because everyone expects it to be able to display every type of web service available, right out of the box. Naturally, you have to tweak the them to your liking.
I'm deprecating the existing Boxy theme soon.
:/
i like it. does what i want it to do. wordpress is too bloated for my tastes. i don't need or want all the stuff it does. the fact that sweetcron grabs my activity across the web, allows me to make blog posts (a bit more extensive than tweets) and isn't a hacked up bloated cow is a good thing.
Including the theme as is in sweetcron was fine. It wasn't set as the default theme anyway. It's a good theme and is partly responsible for making sweetcron popular.
I realize that the development was mostly done for your site in the first place but, the boxy but good theme could have some more sensible default behavior rather than the setup from your website
things “appearing” as photos etc when you don't want them to be is entirely because of the theme. There is a rule in the theme that says “if the item has a photo, display it as a photo box” – in your case you just need to get a bit more granular and say “do the above, but only if it is from a specific domain”, which you can do using the API.
In retrospect, the Boxy But Good theme that everyone loves so much is an inappropriate theme to bundle with the download because everyone expects it to be able to display every type of web service available, right out of the box. Naturally, you have to tweak the them to your liking.
I'm deprecating the existing Boxy theme soon.
:/
i like it. does what i want it to do. wordpress is too bloated for my tastes. i don't need or want all the stuff it does. the fact that sweetcron grabs my activity across the web, allows me to make blog posts (a bit more extensive than tweets) and isn't a hacked up bloated cow is a good thing.
Including the theme as is in sweetcron was fine. It wasn't set as the default theme anyway. It's a good theme and is partly responsible for making sweetcron popular.
I realize that the development was mostly done for your site in the first place but, the boxy but good theme could have some more sensible default behavior rather than the setup from your website
I'm very happy with Sweetcron so far. Easy to install, easy to configure, and easy to theme (although i haven't gotten around to it yet). Yongfook's done a wonderful job.
I'm very happy with Sweetcron so far. Easy to install, easy to configure, and easy to theme (although i haven't gotten around to it yet). Yongfook's done a wonderful job.
i found sweetcron to be quite easy to use and set up and i kind of agree with going with DISQUS as it avoids the problems with the spam bots exploiting the commenting box and posting useless links as ive had that problem with joomla commenting scripts before..
granted my site looks a lot like yongfooks (yongfook if you read this.. hope you dont mind) but thats cuz i havent really customized the template yet or cant find templates yet for sweet cron but given enough time.. u might be able to find templates for sweetcron.. or ill just customize it myself.. but its a good software for automated blogging… especially in the boxy theme…
i found sweetcron to be quite easy to use and set up and i kind of agree with going with DISQUS as it avoids the problems with the spam bots exploiting the commenting box and posting useless links as ive had that problem with joomla commenting scripts before..
granted my site looks a lot like yongfooks (yongfook if you read this.. hope you dont mind) but thats cuz i havent really customized the template yet or cant find templates yet for sweet cron but given enough time.. u might be able to find templates for sweetcron.. or ill just customize it myself.. but its a good software for automated blogging… especially in the boxy theme…
I'm going to go ahead and disagree with you on this one.
First, you're comparing it to WordPress. That's exactly what it's _not_ supposed to be. In terms of functionality, Yongfook has done what so many developers fail to do: focus on a few key features, and leave the rest out.
But if you're in the mood to add functionality, PHP developers can take comfort in the fact that Sweetcron sits on top of CodeIgniter, one of the cleanest, lightweight PHP frameworks I've had the pleasure of working with (and I've worked with quite a few…). If that's what you meant by “off the shelf”, then I think you're missing something. Why _wouldn't_ you want to release a codebase that hundreds (thousands?) of developers can easily grok? Without even running the app, I noticed that the config.php and database.php files weren't set up yet (something every CI dev just kind of instinctually _does_ when starting a new app), so I did that, and the thing ran the first time I opened it in my browser. Just one example of how using a standard base only helps Sweetcron.
My opinion is, Sweetcron is what you want to make of it. Yongfook has done a decent job of implementing the boring bits – namely, the admin/import (well, I think that's the fun part, but nobody likes developing an admin area that no one but you will see). The theme file layout is super-simple, and really, you should be making your own anyhow. The new Sandbox theme (at least, I assume it's new since this post was written) goes a long way in demonstrating the data and methods available to you, and since it's reg'lar old PHP, and NOT some Smarty-crap, it's a quick job.
My only, only complaint… is that there's no nice way to extend it without hacking in the core. Modifying the core isn't necessarily a terrible thing, but it prevents sharing these extensions with other people, as Yongfook has expressed concern in sharing core modifications due to potential upgrade problems. I can understand _why_ he'd do that: I'd want the module system to have a self-contained MVC layout, which would potentially require modifying the CodeIgniter core – not desirable if Yongfook hopes to keep Sweetcron running on the latest-and-greatest CI without modification.
I'm going to go ahead and disagree with you on this one.
First, you're comparing it to WordPress. That's exactly what it's _not_ supposed to be. In terms of functionality, Yongfook has done what so many developers fail to do: focus on a few key features, and leave the rest out.
But if you're in the mood to add functionality, PHP developers can take comfort in the fact that Sweetcron sits on top of CodeIgniter, one of the cleanest, lightweight PHP frameworks I've had the pleasure of working with (and I've worked with quite a few…). If that's what you meant by “off the shelf”, then I think you're missing something. Why _wouldn't_ you want to release a codebase that hundreds (thousands?) of developers can easily grok? Without even running the app, I noticed that the config.php and database.php files weren't set up yet (something every CI dev just kind of instinctually _does_ when starting a new app), so I did that, and the thing ran the first time I opened it in my browser. Just one example of how using a standard base only helps Sweetcron.
My opinion is, Sweetcron is what you want to make of it. Yongfook has done a decent job of implementing the boring bits – namely, the admin/import (well, I think that's the fun part, but nobody likes developing an admin area that no one but you will see). The theme file layout is super-simple, and really, you should be making your own anyhow. The new Sandbox theme (at least, I assume it's new since this post was written) goes a long way in demonstrating the data and methods available to you, and since it's reg'lar old PHP, and NOT some Smarty-crap, it's a quick job.
My only, only complaint… is that there's no nice way to extend it without hacking in the core. Modifying the core isn't necessarily a terrible thing, but it prevents sharing these extensions with other people, as Yongfook has expressed concern in sharing core modifications due to potential upgrade problems. I can understand _why_ he'd do that: I'd want the module system to have a self-contained MVC layout, which would potentially require modifying the CodeIgniter core – not desirable if Yongfook hopes to keep Sweetcron running on the latest-and-greatest CI without modification.
I agree with your article… not I've played around with my installation so much, I'm having issues trying to uninstall it. Any thoughts how I could restore default settings on my webserver with minimal efforts?
I agree with your article… not I've played around with my installation so much, I'm having issues trying to uninstall it. Any thoughts how I could restore default settings on my webserver with minimal efforts?
I agree with your article… not I've played around with my installation so much, I'm having issues trying to uninstall it. Any thoughts how I could restore default settings on my webserver with minimal efforts?
I agree with your article… not I've played around with my installation so much, I'm having issues trying to uninstall it. Any thoughts how I could restore default settings on my webserver with minimal efforts?
Before I start, let me state that in no way I am trying to convince the world what a great guy Yongfook is, nor how awesome his product is. I've played with Sweetcron for a bit and like the concept, but (as Yongfook stated oh-so many times), it's not perfect yet.
That said, I have to say you sound a bit like you're trying to talk with the big guys, but have no idea what you're actually talking about. Before you start grinding your teeth, let me explain. And pardon the blunt-ness, but I felt like starting my comment in the same way you started your article
.
First off, How on earth can you even remotely compare Sweetcron to Wordpress? Wordpress is a full-on blogging package that screams 'I am a blogging package' all over the place, and Sweetcron is basically a fancy RSS-puller with an API that allows you to customize the looks of the end result. No matter how I twist and turn the Sweetcron concept, I can't match it to Wordpress. Except for the fact that yes, indeed you can write a post directly in your sweetcron admin panel. Woosah.
Secondly, It's nice that you agree with Mark Trapp. I'd also love to see some backing up on said statement, as both Marks and yours (identical – nice touch) comments on security seem to go without any form of 'proof'. And even with that, what data needs much protection anyway? Pulling public twitter messages needs some advanced encryption or so? It's friggin public. Elaborate, please! Enlighten the crowd, if you can. Or ask Mark to do it for you, whichever way you prefer
.
Thirdly, calling an alpha-state application incomplete, and stating it needs (serious) improvement is a pretty darn good example of stating the obvious. The day a new product is released and is perfect, pwetty and fully complete/bugfree while still being considered 'nowhere near 1.0', or in geeky terms, 'alpha state', is the day where the universe implodes, Bill Gates becomes pretty and Osama is discovered in Bush's back garden. You get my point.
Fourthly (I know, but your post requires this many replies, so get over it), I'm not sure if having a 'lack of options' is a negative thing, did you mean it like that? If so, you seriously don't 'get' it, and if not, good eye!
Fifthly (I'm on a roll!), I half-agree with you on the commenting part. I like the idea of using a service like Disqus to do the commenting (keeping Sweetcron light, fast and focussed on what it's made for), but it would've been much better if Yongfook implemented an easy way to get a Disqus-powered lifestream rolling. All the code ready, waiting for your options to make it all work.
I would suggest you read back your own article, and take a good look at the mistakes you made. Comparing apples and pears, bashing an alpha-state application for being in, well, alpha stage, and copying other people's quotes without any kind of way to back it up, amongst other things. Or, to say it in short; In your eyes, you completely failed. I kid, I kid.
And to Yongfook; You delivered a nice product. It needs more work, it's not as polished as it one day probably will be, but I like your style. I'm looking forward to see the next stage of Sweetcron.
Before I start, let me state that in no way I am trying to convince the world what a great guy Yongfook is, nor how awesome his product is. I've played with Sweetcron for a bit and like the concept, but (as Yongfook stated oh-so many times), it's not perfect yet.
That said, I have to say you sound a bit like you're trying to talk with the big guys, but have no idea what you're actually talking about. Before you start grinding your teeth, let me explain. And pardon the blunt-ness, but I felt like starting my comment in the same way you started your article
.
First off, How on earth can you even remotely compare Sweetcron to Wordpress? Wordpress is a full-on blogging package that screams 'I am a blogging package' all over the place, and Sweetcron is basically a fancy RSS-puller with an API that allows you to customize the looks of the end result. No matter how I twist and turn the Sweetcron concept, I can't match it to Wordpress. Except for the fact that yes, indeed you can write a post directly in your sweetcron admin panel. Woosah.
Secondly, It's nice that you agree with Mark Trapp. I'd also love to see some backing up on said statement, as both Marks and yours (identical – nice touch) comments on security seem to go without any form of 'proof'. And even with that, what data needs much protection anyway? Pulling public twitter messages needs some advanced encryption or so? It's friggin public. Elaborate, please! Enlighten the crowd, if you can. Or ask Mark to do it for you, whichever way you prefer
.
Thirdly, calling an alpha-state application incomplete, and stating it needs (serious) improvement is a pretty darn good example of stating the obvious. The day a new product is released and is perfect, pwetty and fully complete/bugfree while still being considered 'nowhere near 1.0', or in geeky terms, 'alpha state', is the day where the universe implodes, Bill Gates becomes pretty and Osama is discovered in Bush's back garden. You get my point.
Fourthly (I know, but your post requires this many replies, so get over it), I'm not sure if having a 'lack of options' is a negative thing, did you mean it like that? If so, you seriously don't 'get' it, and if not, good eye!
Fifthly (I'm on a roll!), I half-agree with you on the commenting part. I like the idea of using a service like Disqus to do the commenting (keeping Sweetcron light, fast and focussed on what it's made for), but it would've been much better if Yongfook implemented an easy way to get a Disqus-powered lifestream rolling. All the code ready, waiting for your options to make it all work.
I would suggest you read back your own article, and take a good look at the mistakes you made. Comparing apples and pears, bashing an alpha-state application for being in, well, alpha stage, and copying other people's quotes without any kind of way to back it up, amongst other things. Or, to say it in short; In your eyes, you completely failed. I kid, I kid.
And to Yongfook; You delivered a nice product. It needs more work, it's not as polished as it one day probably will be, but I like your style. I'm looking forward to see the next stage of Sweetcron.
I'm using word press blog, I find the admin panel rather easier than any other CMS for blogs, though never had played with drupal. There are even so many plug ins available that I can think about anything to be part of my blog and its there developed already. This is the advantage of community that grows so rapidly
I think a small change in words can clear this up. “SweetCron doesn't work for me because…” and “SweetCron might work well for someone who would like to….” “what do you all think?”
Same results, maybe a constructive discussion. I just started using Sweetcron and it was just what I was looking for. I don't want to spend a ton of time on my home blog so that I can focus on more specific blogging in other places. With Sweetcron my content updates at home with indirect effort that would already be there.
Just wanted to leave some good Karma – Thanks for the program Yongfook! I'm a massive newbie with php and moderately comfortable with HTML/CSS – primarily focus on online marketing – probably will sign up for peashoot to give it a try
… Have to take a look and see if you already have it packed for resellers. Thanks again mate!
Actually I'd been putting of trying Sweetcron, feeling that it would be limited or difficult to maintain. Imagine my delight to find out that it is just the opposite – easy to install, easy to use, and fantastically useful.
I heart Sweetcron in a big way and am using it at http://life.paulr.ca