Chyrp

Chyrp is a free and open source blog publishing application, developed by Alex Suraci. Chyrp is intended to be light-weight, yet functional.

Homepage: chyrp.net

History
The idea of Chyrp has started in 2004 by Alex Suraci. Initially the project was called MCMS (mynimal CMS); then Mynimalistic; then Lingua; and so it has derived to Chyrp.

Design
Chyrp is a tumblelog-like blogging engine, hosted on one's own server. It uses a flexible plug-in system, with modules called "Feathers", providing more dedicated types of content to add, and themes, to change the appearance of the website.

Chyrp is built over PHP, MySQL (or SQLite), and AJAX.

Core modulesThe default Chyrp install is rather vanilla, but Chyrp can be extended through modules. Modules are things that enable extra functionality to Chyrp. There are sixteen default Modules bundled to every Chyrp installation, each providing certain functionality for a certain topic.

• Aggregator: Pulls content RSS2/Atom feeds into your Chyrp installation as posts.
• Cacher: Caches pages, drastically reducing server load.
• Comments: Adds commenting functionality to posts, including Akismet spam protection, auto-reloading, pagination, etc.
• Likes: Adds a Like feature to your Chyrp posts.
• Markdown: A Markdown wrapper for posts, pages, and comments.
• Paging: Split entries into multiple pages at page tags.
• Read More: Splits entries at more tag.
• SmartyPants: A SmartyPants wrapper for posts, pages, and comments.
• SWFUpload: This is a helper module which provides functionality to other modules.
• Tags: Adds tagging functionality to posts, allowing organization, grouping, and adding keywords to posts.
• Textilize: A Textile wrapper for posts, pages, and comments.
• Email Blog: Lets you post to chyrp from email..
• Extension Manager: Allows you to install modules and themes from the chyrp site..
• Recaptcha: A Module that provides recaptcha on your site..
• Theme Editor: Edit the code in chyrp themes.
• Categorize: Adds categories that posts can be added under.

Chyrp is a blogging engine designed to be very lightweight while retaining functionality. It is powered by PHP and has very powerful theme and extension engines, so you can personalize it however you want. The code is well-documented, and it has a very strong structure that's loosely based on the MVC design pattern. There are many things special about Chyrp, but the best way to describe it is to just have you try it yourself.