Known
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Known is a simple platform for publishing words, pictures, podcasts and more to a site that you control. Choose to share it on social networks like Twitter and Facebook, or extend it to integrate with the software you already use.
Cost / License
- Freemium
- Proprietary
Application typeApplication types
Platforms
- Online
- Self-Hosted
Features
Known News & Activities
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Recent activities
Sandeep-Kumar added Known as alternative to Radius CMS
MeridianOS added Known as alternative to MeridianOS
Eli Wayman added Known as alternative to Agora MMXXV- bloop liked Known
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WordPress Alternatives for Self Publishers
By the end of 2016 I felt WordPress was not working for me as a self publisher. I've been creating and maintaining my own sites since 1996, in one format or another. What I want in a CMS is a word processor for the web. Marketing, SEO, and fancy gimmicks are secondary to creating, publishing, and distributing content. I don't want to spend time learning and relearning how to use software. I'm picky about web design and I don't jump on trends just because they are new and flashy. Yes, I want my site to be read, but SEO and marketing are a slippery slope when it comes to ethics and trust. People don't read sites that focus on marketing - the more marketing hype, the less real readers.
WordPress is definitely geared to pleasing web developers and marketers, people who offer services like beginning a site, curation, maintenance and running a site for people who don't want to run a site themselves. People want automated sites to sell stuff. But, that's not what I want to do. So I left WordPress.
Over most of 2017 I tried alternatives to WordPress. I wanted a CMS (content management software) to be user friendly, rather than having to understand API and REST and other things I don't need or want to learn. I wanted something with the features WordPress keeps eliminating like keeping a list of links, having a bookmarklet to post links and content from other sites via my web browser. Very important was to find a CMS which was not mothballed and not focused on how they can make a buck from me. Also, self hosted.
I had a very hard time moving my sites out of WordPress and into anything else. Most other CMS do not have a way to migrate your sites, reliably. I've realized the best way to move sites from WordPress is not to migrate anything. Leave the old site up, just change it to a subdomain and start fresh on the main domain with which ever WordPress alternative you want to start using. You can move posts over manually, one by one. Or, you can use your old post content and create an updated post based on what you had written before. This would be simpler than trying to bring back your entire old site, especially if it was huge.
I have tried far more CMS than I am adding to this list. To be honest, I don't remember most of them well enough to give a review. Several were complicated to install which did not seem like a good beginning to use them to publish a site. So this list is mainly the highlights and lowlights of my CMS adventures beginning in 2017 and still ongoing in 2020.
Notes
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What is Known?
Known information
Developed by
Known, Inc Licensing
Proprietary and Freemium product.Pricing
free version with limited functionality.Rating
Average rating of 2.6Alternatives
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Comments and Reviews
Easy install with clean interface. Very lightweight with low server load.
Option to connect (in both directions) with Twitter and other social platform.
Static pages are optional as well. Audio, video & media easily shared/displayed.
You own all your data as it originates on your very own Known site.
Free. Open Source. Recommended.
It looked promising, but there is no official Docker image and third party ones were absolutely horribly built. Downloading a .zip is not really the way to go in 2021.
It's in PHP, therefore quite easy to host oneself.
It's NOT for non-technical lay people who simply want to get online and blog.
Although the documentation says that they offer a free hosted version, there is no way to sign up to it. It's like a side-quest in a video game. The documentation directs us to fill the contact-us form. But that form seems to be designed only for academia.
Other option is to install to your own hosting -- good luck doing that from a .zip file!
The antipathy towards user-friendliness is palpable!!
I totally agree that it’s a drag to get a hosted version.
But the installation on a standard web host is not complicated at all. Unpack the zip file, upload the folder and visit your web site. You have to type in your database details, enter a user name and password etc. Same procedure as with WordPress or whatever.
It is not difficult to install, but it is cumbersome, such as having to create and specify a database and touching Apache settings. In particular, Apache AllowOverride error has occurred, but it is useless to correct as indicated. I wasted my time without even getting in.
There are many platforms that are easier to install and use than this. Don't waste your time with this.
Beautiful and easy to use. Still needs some development to be ready for 1.0 version.
I have been using Known since a little more than a year as my main publishing tool to post to corporate silo networks and it's wonderful !
you can use Known to export/import your wordpress or blogger blog/site and just get it back into your Known site easy. than if you self host, you're able to connect a bunch of social networks to it and push your pictures/posts/status/checkins to each of them while retaining the control & ownership of your data at home. you can either get this working on your own or by using the convoy plugin (paid).
with Known you can own your data, tie it to a secure certificate (letsencrypt) and be part of the open web and still maintain the ability to reach other audiences on the corporate web.
I honestly have been waiting to make use of the internet the way I describe above since it started for me in 98 and now in 2016 this is precisely what anyone can do !
[Edited by rickmendes, February 26]