From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2008-02-02T03:42:07+09:00
Subject: Re: [OT] Blogging Platform suggestions?

On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 11:36:43PM +0900, Bira wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> First of all, I would like to apologize for being off-topic.
> 
> As you can see in my signature, I have a Portuguese language blog on
> Blogger/Blogspot, but I haven't been very satisfied with this platform
> lately. It has started throwing exceptions in my face when I try to
> post something, so I think it's time to move. Since so many people
> here have blogs, I would like to ask for your recommendation of a
> better platform/hosting service.
> 
> I know there's been a theory talked about lately that the best thing
> to do is to build your own blog and host it, and this is something I
> would like to do in the future, but I'm looking for a somewhat quicker
> solution right now :). I'd like to use a free hosted service that
> supports code syntax highlighting, and is reasonably flexible in terms
> of theme and layout customization. Having the ability to import from
> Blogger is a plus. I'm leaning a bit towards Wordpress right now, as
> it seems to fill most of these criteria, but I'm wondering if there
> isn't some hip new thing somewhere out there :).
> 
> Again, sorry for the noise. Please reply privately if you think a
> public response would further pollute the list.

I've been running a personal weblog with WordPress for a long time.  It
has its ups and downs.  Among the downs are some of the asinine
assumptions it makes about what the user wants to do, the spaghetti code
under the hood, and the tendency of upgrades for security patches to
break stuff.  Among the upsides are things like the fact it's not
Blogger, or LiveJournal, which are even worse.

Whatever you do, avoid using a weblog *service*.  Get some shared
hosting (with SFTP for secure file transfers) at least, and run your own
weblog software.  Many Blogger and LiveJournal don't realize the
frustration that readers who are not Blogger or LiveJournal users
encounter when trying to deal with these services.

I'm increasingly of the opinion that I should write my own weblog
software.  I intend to start a second personal weblog and write the
software as I go.  This one will, at least initially, be specifically a
development weblog, and be used to chronicle the process of writing the
software for, um, itself.  At least, that's the plan at this time.
I'll probably just maintain the old one with WordPress as an archive of
my old material after I get the software written to the point where I can
restart my general-purpose personal weblog without giving up any needed
functionality.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
John W. Russell: "People point. Sometimes that's just easier. They also use
words. Sometimes that's just easier. For the same reasons that pointing has
not made words obsolete, there will always be command lines."