Weblog software is designed to simplify the creation and maintenance of weblogs. As specialized content management systems, weblog applications support the authoring, editing, and publishing of blog posts and comments, with special functions for image management, web syndication, and moderation of posts and comments.

We all know WordPress is one the most popular weblog applications. What other options can we choose? We have collected the following Top Quality Weblog Software Other Than WordPress for you.

Melody is an open source content management, blogging and publishing platform, derived from the popular blogging tool Movable Type. At its onset, Melody is distinct from Movable Type by having put in place a set of processes that assist the greater Movable Type and Melody communities to contribute features, changes and fixes more freely and quickly back to the core product. This allows independent developers to pursue the features and preferences that matter to them most.

The promise of Melody is to serve its community by working to build a product according to the principles and philosophies that have helped make WordPress, Apache, Linux, Firefox and other open source applications so successful. Those principles include creating and fostering open communication channels with its user base, by building transparency into its roadmap, and by permitting users to more freely contribute back to the core product.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://openmelody.org/

When it comes to publishing on the internet, beginners and experts alike are met with a bothersome paradox: word processors and graphics applications allow anyone to do a pretty good job of managing text and images on a personal computer, but to make these available to the worldwide web – a seemingly similar environment of documents and destinations – ease of use vanishes behind sudden requirements for multilingual programming skills, proficiency in computer-based graphic design, and, ultimately, the patience of a saint.

Textpattern is a flexible, elegant and easy-to-use content management system and it is both free and open source. Textpattern is a web application designed to help overcome these and other hurdles to publishing online, and to simplify the production of well-structured, standards-compliant web pages.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://www.textpattern.com/

Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Drupal is open-source software distributed under the GPL (”General Public License”) and is maintained and developed by a community of thousands of users and developers.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://drupal.org/

Radiant is a no-fluff, open source content management system designed for small teams with the following main features. Built from the ground up to be as simple as possible, Radiant features an elegant administrative interface that centers around three key components: pages, snippets, and layouts. (more…)

Would you like to start your own blog network or community? Blogs.mu is a site that allows you to setup your own WordPress based blog community or network - with the minimum of fuss. Using this site you can simply create your own blog hosting service - for any purpose you so wish to use it.

You could use Blogs.mu as a local news site (each reporter or topic could have a blog, strung together by a fancy homepage), a place where you can personally keep several blogs on different topics (and aggregate them together at your homepage), a community discussion site (where everyone had their own soapbox!) or a fanzine for your favorite sports club.

Your new blog community site comes stacked with great themes, custom developed and tested for your use. You can also set what themes your users can access.  As a Blogs.mu Supporter you can easily run your own custom advertising campaigns from within your site admin area, just paste in the ad code you want to use.  As site admin of your community you can manage, moderate and edit every blog, post and comment in your network.

Pricing: less than $1 per blog
Source: http://blogs.mu/

ocPortal is a CMS (Content Management System) that allows you to create and manage your interactive and dynamic website from an easy to use administration interface. ocPortal is unique by the combination of a vast and diverse range of provided functionality, out-of-the-box usability, and an ability for unlimited customisation.

ocPortal offers many powerful features such as:

• sophisticated tools to help you build and manage your website, such as the Theme Wizard to allow you to set up your own colour scheme in just a few minutes.
• functionality for all forms of content, includes articles, pages, downloads, banners, and your own custom forms of content.
• the ‘points’ system, and the point-store, that allow users to earn, donate and spend points in your community.
• integration with 8 different popular forums, as well as our own leading forum that is (optionally) seamlessly integrated into the system.

ocPortal is completely free under an OSI-approved Open Source licence since version 4.0. There are no restrictions on usage, and they don’t keep away any ‘pro’ features from users.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://ocportal.com/

Posterous lets you post things online fast using email. You email Posterous at post@posterous.com and they reply instantly with your new posterous blog. If you can use email, you can have your own website to share thoughts and media with friends, family and the world. You can attach any type of file and we’ll post it along with the text of your email. They do smarter things for photos, MP3’s, documents and video (both links AND files).

Email can easily be spoofed, but Posterous has come up with some ways to figure out if the email we receive comes from you. If they think it might not be you, they ask you to confirm the email before they post it. No matter what, you always get an email notification of every post we put online for your blog, with an easy link to remove the post if you didn’t do it.

After all, Posterous is enthusiastically a free service. Later, they will be adding premium features they know you’ll love, but there will always be a useful free version you can use.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://posterous.com/

It’s true that there are tons of blogging software solutions from which to choose. Each has their place, and their legion of ardent followers.

Habari is being written with a firm understanding of the current state of blogging. Most other blogging packages have been around long enough that their responses to things like comment spam and Digg site overloads are bolted on after the fact; whereas Habari is being written from the beginning to take these things — and more — into account.

Habari strongly favors open, standard, and documented protocols. Atom, being both open and documented, is the prefered syndication format, and the Atom Publishing Protocol is the prefered means of remote communication with your site. This is a core feature, and not a plugin.

Habari is being written specifically for modern web hosting environments, and uses modern object-oriented programming techniques. Using these recent but well-established additions to the PHP language allows Habari to make use of PDO, enabling prepared statements for all interactions with the database. This greatly reduces the system’s vulnerability to SQL injection attacks. This is just one of many benefits of modern object-oriented techniques.

Those are just a few of the technical differences, but a major component of what makes Habari different is its community participation model. Users who demonstrate a consistent level of quality contributions to the project are granted more privileges within the project.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://habariproject.org

Markup Factory is a web publishing platform that helps you create great websites and keep them fresh and useful and alive. Plus, you can easily start an email newsletter, publish a calendar or blog, or take online registrations for your events. The Markup Factory Template Engine can support native XHTML / CSS code. Simply copy and paste, or use the Markup Factory scripting engine to add life to your template.

The other unique component to Markup Factory is that it provides a powerful set of web applications ready to deploy with minimal effort. If you want to deploy dynamic of data driven functionality on your website, most of the heavy lifting is already done for you so that you can focus on the implementation. Optional add-ons include some very powerful utilities that convert your website into a powerful communications tool. Learn more about the Events Engine, Online Store, Newsletters, Membership Module, and Online Database.

The only disadvantage is that Markup Factory is not free. However, all plans are pay as you go. There are no long-term contracts, no setup fees, no termination fee, and you may cancel at any time.

Pricing: Fully Loaded ($149/mo), Pro ($49/mo), Basic ($14.95/mo)
Source: http://www.markupfactory.com

dotCMS Core is the most feature complete open source web CMS available today. Available under the GPL, you can freely download the dotCMS system and get up, running and managing web sites and web content in a matter of minutes. Unlike many other “open source” cms, dotCMS is in no way crippled. When you download the dotCMS system, you are getting all of the functions and features needed to begin creating customized, manageable and scalable web sites. This includes so called “advanced” features such as LDAP/AD integration, clustering support, online templating, Web2.0 Calendaring and the structured content engine.

If you are looking to get a head start in getting your new web sites off the ground, they offer accelerators - starter sites - that combine the power and flexibility of the dotCMS system with cutting edge information architecture, compliant HTML and pre-build functions. These accelerators are designed to be easy to customize and brand with unique graphical design.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://www.dotcms.org/

Squarespace is an exceptionally tuned publishing system for managing websites and blogs. Need to create a blog? Build a website? Our software helps discerning individuals build stylish, easy to manage websites complete with state-of-the-art blogging tools. Squarespace hosts thousands of high-quality websites — both large and small.

The Squarespace Journal, which can represent either a piece of your website, or the entirety of your site, is an ideal way to create a professional blog. Squarespace’s professional-grade blogging tools feature spell checking, ATOM, RSS, feed auto-discovery, XML-RPC pinging, comment management, member registration, timed publishing dates, multiple authors, and more.

Squarespace comes pre-loaded with a variety of professionally designed, search-engine friendly templates that you can customize and tweak to create a unique site. With Squarespace’s style editor, you can use one of our professional starting points to begin a design of your own.

Pricing: $7/month - $175/month
Source: http://squarespace.com/

ExpressionEngine is a flexible, feature-rich content management system that empowers thousands of individuals, organizations, and companies around the world to easily manage their website. If you’re tired of the limitations of your current CMS then take ExpressionEngine for a spin.

Unlike most other publishing systems, ExpressionEngine doesn’t force you to work a certain way. It adapts to your creative process. Examine our portfolio of featured sites and you’ll find that each one uniquely fulfills the creative and artistic vision of its designer. No cookie-cutter sites here.

ExpressionEngine is modular by design, enabling you to easily add new features and capability with add-on modules, plugins, and extensions. Included by default are 17 add-on modules, access to over 100 plugins, and dozens of extension hooks.

Pricing: Core (Free), Personal ($99.95), Commercial ($249.95)
Source: http://expressionengine.com/

Symphony is a web publishing system made for web developers. It gives you all the power and flexibility you’ll need, while keeping out of your way.

Symphony lets you organise everything the way you like, from your publishing environment to your website’s URL structure. Built to be versatile and customisable, Symphony really is what you make of it.

Symphony’s templating engine is pure XSLT goodness. XSLT is a standard recommended by the W3C, so learning Symphony means that you’re learning skills that you can also use outside of the system. If you already know the XML and CSS standards, then chances are you should be able to quickly pick up XSLT.

Symphony lets you to create small blocks of XSLT code called utilities, which you can use as building blocks to construct your site’s pages. Due to the nature of XSLT, these utilities are highly reusable, so the next time you’re developing a website you’ll probably find you’ve already done half the work.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://21degrees.com.au/products/symphony/