Custom Blogging
Finally! Bamboo Studios.com is now nearly complete, and if you’re reading this then chances are I’ve launched the site. For those that don’t know, I’m Jacob and this is my website, BambooStudios.com. It is both my gallery and my weblog. Or, you could say, it is both my portfolio site and my experimental zone where I’m constantly trying to improve my web design skills.
This blog will cover everything contemporary design, new media, artistic/design process, and, of course, web design. This first ever entry was published using a custom blogging system which you are presently reading the results of republished with Wordpress. Therefore, it made sense that this first entry should be no longer makes sense that this first entry is about custom blogging. Enjoy!
Why Custom?
Well, it’s far from being perfect… but I think what I’ve created here could be called a custom blog is one kick ass Wordpress site, lovingly handwritten in PHP \ MySQL tweaked to suit my needs. I would never argue that it is the best solution for running a blog… but for this experimental / personal website… I’m willing to risk it. For me, the potential advantages seem to out-weigh the potential drawbacks:
Advantages
- Nice, light, portable code
- Familiarity with the code and document structure
- Ability to integrate with custom CSS
- Ability to integrate with an existing user database or other third party applications
- Growing Toolkit of custom code that can be re-purposed for future projects
- No need to turn off unused features… only code what you need.
- Custom file folder structure… for when actually working on the site
- complete control
Disadvantages
- Lacking in features that might be missed later on
- Potentially less secure if not properly coded
- Time consuming to develop
- Probably more… but none come to mind
The Alternatives
The alternatives are awesome, to say the least! Wordpress, Moveable Type, Textile… I don’t know, lots. I know that I’ve tried Google’s Blogger, b2 Evolution, and Wordpress; in that order. Of them all I liked Wordpress the best and still use it at work. I would love to try some of the other publishing options, but alas, time and money are always constraints.
This entry is not meant to promote custom blogging as something better than using pre-built systems, but rather to promote it as a fun and interesting way to learn the ropes of PHP / MySQL. It is more of a project than a solution.
The Basics of a Blog
The basic blog consists of the following elements:
- Blog articles / entries
- Comments or Discussion Pages
- Categories for articles / entries
- Archives
The blog entries, comments and categories can be organized in database tables, and the archives can be generated from the date that’s created with the blog entries. You could actually manage the presentation of the content with a single PHP file that displayed different information depending on the query string being passed to it; or you could break it up into separate files, like index, archives, categories, comments, etc. It really doesn’t matter, the point is that it is really simple, at least it seems like it is.
I would really like to know what other people out there think about creating a basic blogging system from scratch. Is there something about it that others avoid for a reason? Am I missing something?
Please, don’t hesitate to let me know what you think… I’m trying to figure it out myself. Let me know if you think I’m on the right track.