From LifeType Wiki
The goal of the LifeType project is to create a stable multi-user and multi-blogging platform, to strengthen the concept of communities around blogs.
History
The LifeType project started in February 2003 when its leader, Oscar Renalias, needed a set of dynamic scripts for his personal web page. Even though he did not know about the idea of weblogs back then, the outcome of the first iteration of the project already resembled one. A few weeks later Francesc, another one of the founding members, suggested that developing a blog with support for multiple users and blogs could be a better idea, and so pLog 0.1 was released on the 2nd of September 2003 featuring most of the features that are still part of the core features nowadays: multi-user and multi-blog from the ground up, template engine, localizable and extensible via plugins.
pLog 0.2 was released on the 9th of November, sporting new search engine-friendly URLS, speed improvements, a better plugin interface and changes in the administration interface. At this point is where pLog started to gather some interest from the community and when pLog 0.3 was released later on March 2004, it was warmly received by the community: it still is the most downloaded pLog/LifeType release ever. pLog 0.3 introduced the concept of "resources" and the integration of media files with articles, time differences, an integrated RSS parser and a Bayesian anti spam filter.
pLog 1.0 was released after a lot of hard work by the development team on the 1st of April 2005, and it stands as the most polished version of pLog up to date. Despite not having been downloaded as many times as pLog 0.3.2, a lot of blogging communites built around LifeType 1.0.x have emerged.
Currently the most recent version of LifeType is 1.1.
Relationship between LifeType and pLog
Amazon.com has been holding the "plog" trademark much longer than the project has been around, so the project was kindly asked to change its name.
On behalf of the LifeType project, we would like to thank the attitude of Amazon.com towards the LifeType project. Where others would have decided to sue an open source project, Amazon.com decided to work together with us so that we could find a solution that would suit all of us. And this is how the pLog project became the LifeType project.
Features
The Features page contains a high-level description of the features available in LifeType, while LifeType 1.1 Features lists all the new features and improvements that were developed for LifeType 1.1.
Technical Overwiew
LifeType is a PHP and MySQL based blogging platform and its main goals are to provide the highest amounts of flexibility and extendibility while remaining simple enough for people not experienced with programming.
To achieve this, LifeType utilizes a particular core structure implemented via a powerful template system based on the Smarty template engine. This methodology of separation between presentation and core code allows LifeType to create a platform that is both highly customizable and safer -- templates can be (re)designed without fear of "breaking" LifeType.
Technical Strategy
LifeType's design goal is to create a blogging platform that will enable users to spend as little time as possible between installation and actually posting. For that reason, LifeType will stay within its confines of a blogging platform and will not add any official features that aren't strictly blogging related. LifeType will not attempt to become another content management system like PostNuke or Joomla, though the templating system is simple enough, so that embeding other software packages into LifeType is relatively simple (and vice versa).
At the same time, the plugin framework allows one to easily extend and expand LifeType with specific features. By implementing plugin support, LifeType hopes to avoid the rampant code-bloating in other software. While any plugin is useful to some people, none are useful to all - instead slowing down processing time and adding bandwidth. Using plugins allows users who only want the basic blogging experience to avoid the hassle of disabling random elements within thousands of lines of code.
Roadmap
The project maintains an official Roadmap for new releases.
