Features

Publishing

Code conforms to the W3C standards, including XHTML 1.0

Ability to parse the content with XML technologies, like XSLT.
Better content accessibility for the visitors using nonconventional accesses (mobile phones, Braille parsers, Screen readers, PDAs...).

Use of CSS

Change of the look and feel of all the pages of the site is very easy, by modifying only one central document, the style sheet. Reduction of the band-width used and the download times.

URL significant

For a better indexing and an intuitive access, the articles have URLs with the format: /blog/year/month/day/id-title. (In conformity with principle URL as UI )

RSS and Atom feeds

The presence of RSS and Atom feeds makes it possible for the users of RSS readers to follow the update of the blog from their favorite software.

Complete trackbacks

With the trackbacks you can react to an article of another blog and alert it, in an almost automatic way, about your reaction.

Complete unicode support

The unicode support makes it possible to publish texts using alphabets different from traditional Latin. It is thus possible to publish in Japanese, Russian, Arab, etc; with nothing to do before.

Management

Multi-user levels

A system of levels makes it possible to define advanced writers, administrators, or writers, each one with different privileges. For example, a "simple" writer sees only his posts, whereas the "advanced" writer can manage the categories. The administrator has the possibility to create new accounts.

Multilingual interface

Each user can choose the language in which he wishes to see the management interface of the blog.

Flexible comments

Each post can be commented, DotClear offers the option to activate the comments post by post. It is of course possible to remove or correct comments.

Wiki syntax and (X)HTML

To adapt to a broad audience, it is possible to enter the posts and their layout according to two syntaxes: Wiki (very simple but powerful syntax) or (X)HTML (for the users familiar with this language).

Support of XML/RPC clients

You can edit the weblog from third party applications. DotClear entirely supports the MovableType API.

Technical aspects

Use of MySQL and PHP 4.1+

Will work on most of the providers, free or not, offering maximum independence with the provider hosting the Blog.

Object Ortiented Programing

Modular and extensible application.

Paranoiac author ;-)

Extremely securised application.

Others

Specialized

DotClear was done only for weblogs management, and do it well.

Completely free

DotClear is a free software distributed under the GNU General Public License. More details.