Has anyone else noticed a large amount of ping backs to link farms from Planet Ubuntu feeds over the last few days? I’m getting a fair few. I’d give an example but if I link to a site that takes my posts from a syndicated site and creates posts that are syndicated on other sites I might create some sort of perpetual motion blog post and consume the Internet (it might seem far fetched but what if Robert Morris had stopped to think).

I find these objectionable though – they appear to be Wordpress and I guess are using a plugin to pull feeds in and publish as articles. They’re not as bad as flat out plagiarism – which I’ve experienced. Mind you even that isn’t the worst, I once wrote a howto which was CC licensed and I realised it had been ripped off when someone posted a comment on it suggesting (quite strongly) that I had taken it from the thief!

So it occurs to me that maybe this is a Wordpress thing. Then again maybe not. Like so many of us I get stuck in my ways and Wordpress is like a pair of comfy shoes. Maybe I should try a new platform, so I wondered what was popular out there in Ubuntu-land.

I’ve tried Drupal (I don’t like it, sorry Emma), Serendipity and Pixie (I quite liked that but baulked at the theming system). Mind you I also have quite a lot of time to myself over the next four months, maybe I should roll my own, I’ve hacked around in PHP but have never developed a large project using it.

So let me know, suggestions on a postcard. Maybe just a comment here will suffice.