Christian wrote a little post asking why the Habari community was snubbed in the recent Smashing Magazine 10 Weblog Engines Reviewed post.

Why was Habari not included in this list? Well it was included in an honourable list. Instead though they included Joomla and Drupal. All very good applications in their own right, but far too bloated to be considered weblog engines (they’re designed for bigger sites are they not?).

In any case, I feel that the reason why Habari wasn’t included in here is a collection of things, but it is telling. While I wouldn’t go so far and say that Smashing Magazine in the authority of the internet Zeitgeist, I will say that they generally put a lot of effort into their posts and do a certain amount of research, so their not so much dismisal but rather short billing is indicative of where Habari stands right now. The problem is that I don’t think that Habari, the community or software is to blame here; rather I feel it has something to do with the net landscape as we are right now.

You could say that Habari is still pretty young in it’s cycle, however it’s a HELL of a lot more developed than the bit of software called WordPress was when I started using it (version 0.6 I believe). Back then WordPress didn’t have ANY themes. The plugin library was in the single most infant state you could imagine (if you compare it to now). The less we talk about the interface the better (that ship is stll a rudderless pile of shit as they change it more for version 2.7 if the latest betas are to go by, and believe me I don’t care enough to go there anyway). I don’t think the reasons for the lack of credibility can be attributed to the software’s limitations, because if you’re looking for something to post a blog, and enhance your site with any one of the currently available plugins, Habari is a pretty solid foundation that is only moving forward, moving into the future, because honestly all of those other ones that are on the Smashing Magazine post feel like the past.

So what is missing? Blogs are now a standard part of the net landscape. Open source projects are a dime a dozen (hell that list isn’t exhaustive by any stretch of the imagination, since it doesn’t include Habari or Chryp, to name a couple). Blogs are not this new and exciting medium that they were 4 years ago. People know about them and have had one at some point in their lives, even the completely tech neophytes out there will have dabbled. The options to create something online are a lot larger than before.

The other thing is that Habari hasn’t had a catalyst that exploded the scene. There was no Moveable Type changing their license rubbish and now back again (or whatever). That was the push that WordPress needed, initially. Right now, work is being done on WordPress but honestly it feels more like a rudderless titanic. Then you’ve got Textpattern….seriously is the project still alive? A while back I heard of a Textpattern fork, not heard anything else about it since then, but then again I’ve not been actively seeking any information so they could have moved forward?

The thing is that to draw people in there has to be some form of marketing push. What I mean by that is the word of mouth about Habari really has to begin in full steam. The great thing is that people are starting to do this, slowly but surely. Michael is talking more about Habari, as is Owen and Chris. Remember those badges that lived on the side of blogs? Remember the ones for Firefox? The thing with those of course is that the actual image usually pretty distinctive. The firefox logo is extremely iconic. Something akin to this would help spread it out again. It could be a community push that al those actively running their sites on Habari should have the badge to wear proudly.

Clearly there are other things that need to be done, however as with the Habari motto, the word really needs to be spread in a number of ways which can only be a good thing for the software and the community.