Yesterday I got an invitation from vox team, the new blog engine from six apart network and sined up there. What was my first impression about vox is “cool!!!”. I noticed many uptodate features. Beside those cool features I also feel lack of some necessary features as well. In this post I am going to figure out some good features, some missing features and some confusing features.

You can visit my vox blog at http://storyteller.vox.com

The Good
– Integration with Flickr, iStockPhoto, Photobucket
– Integration with Amazon. So that you can search for any item in amazon and add it in your blog. But there is no place to add amazon referral link or anything.
– Integration with YouTube.
– Personalized Collections
– A lot of colorful themes
– A web2.0 look and feel
– Use of AJAX in a smart way
– Use of ThickBoxes for adding content
– Easy navigation Panel
– Very good Neighbor Management
– Role based content display
– Thumbnail Management
– SpellChecker
– Strong Search Engine
– Powerfull Tagging
– Very good photo management
– SEO
– Choose Layout Style
– Draft Management

The Bad
– No way to add blogroll
– No way to add remote (hot linked) image
– Confusing Administration Panel and Collection Management, specially for Title Management and Sidebar object management.
– You cannot display collection objects in your frontpage but title of your collection
– No Password Protected post
– No customized comment spam management
– You cannot set external link for images
– Not sure about the size of uploaded contents. No information in appropriate place.
– Cannot Modify a part of the theme

The Ugly
– No Blogrolls (Whoa!!!, you can only connect to existing VOX members)
– No Hotlinking of Images
– It takes several hours to find out where I can change my blogs title. If it is available in my profile instead of themes section, it will be perfect.
– No HTML supported in personal details section.
– While commenting, you have to type HTML codes like <b> manually. Ni rich editor for commenting.
– No Keyboard shortcut while composing, like Ctrl+B
– I dont find any link for trackbacking to external post or from external post to my vox post.
– No public theme design documentation
– No post category, everything is tag based

So far this is my review on Vox. Vox seems extremely promising and it comes from Six apart who already have a huge blog engine development experience. Currently six aparts develops MovableType, Typepad, LiveJournal and Vox.