So recently I made the offhand tweet that Habari will be the new Rails, and I was only partially joking.

This sparked a few tweets from friends of mine, ranging from the usual supportive, uplifting words of Caius, to the disbelief of my good friend Kevin, and finally ending with the always sage words of the good doctor.

It was at this point that I realized people don't get what Habari really is... even some of us who founded the thing.

What Habari Is

Habari is a stunningly beautiful piece of code. From its architecture to its admin UI Habari is just beautiful to look at. It offers unparalleled flexibility and forward thinking. Writing plugins and themes for it is a joy, and we are just getting started in those areas.

In short, Habari is one of the best pieces of software out there to build your blog with.

What Habari isn't

You sitting down? Good. Habari is not and I repeat not blog software.

Can you build and publish a blog with it? Absolutely, but it is not blog software. Labeling it as such is a disservice to the software as well as to the core vision that those of us who founded it had. Habari is no one thing, and that is why it is so exciting to work with.

One of the core ideas behind the creation of Habari was that we can't anticipate what content websites will be pushing in 10 years, let alone 10 months so don't tie the software, and ultimately your users, to any one thing.

Habari is content agnostic, meaning it just really doesn't care what you create and manage with it. You register a new content type, tell Habari how to act with it and get on with your life.

I don't think the four of us who sat around a table at Bucca really understood what we were hoping to create, we just knew we wanted something different. And boy did we get what we wanted.

Habari has all the makings of a top shelf rapid development framework. The ACL system that landed in 0.6 gives you complete control over the actions of those who create accounts on your site. The internal URL parser and plugin architecture give you so much power that it really can become awe inspiring as you write a couple of methods and find you have a workable web app.

These reasons and a host of others are why I say that Habari can be the next Rails. I am hoping that Tim and Tracker (site coming soon) will help to prove the case for Habari as an application framework.

Both of them are built on Habari with no core code modifications, just some plugins, custom classes and theme work.

And that my friends, is pretty amazing.