I suck at blogging (and my solution)
I suck at writing posts for this blog on a regular basis. Part of the problem is I don’t feel like the design is setup to do what I want. Part of that is my fault, part of that is WordPress’ fault. And part of that is I have been so busy lately that blogging has been the last thing on my to do list.
My Solution?
Ditch WordPress, learn something new, and setup the my “blog” to become more of “my portal.”
How I plan on doing it
A little background: In August when I was working on AppMrkt with Jonathan we were using Subversion and Ruby on Rails - both of which I had to install on my computer so that I could work locally. Let’s just say that before this, I was scared of the command line. Typing things in the command line was like a foreign language to me. In fact, Jonathan had to walk me through each step to install Subversion and Ruby on Rails (complete with type this: tar xvf….) and I worked comfortably with Subversion and Ruby on Rails for a month or two using basic commands.
Flash forward to…now. Jonathan and I found another kickass developer to work with us and we’re working on some exciting projects. Part of our goal is to not get real jobs if we don’t have to, meaning we’re about to start working really hard to create some cool websites and web apps that we think you’ll enjoy using. We’re under extra pressure because Jon just graduated and Sean (the other developer) has been done with college for a few years now and was sick of the “corporate” world. I’ll talk more about that some other time.
My central role in our arrangement is “designer” and “project manager” (although we are all managing the projects). But I want to be able to develop small parts of the applications as I need to, and eventually maybe I’ll even be able to write major features - who knows.
So, in line with that goal, I installed Django on my MacBook and started writing code. But I am not developing a blog with Django - I am developing a “portal” to my life. I will have a blog, of course, but also a string of links (my own del.icio.us), a section to record my golf scores and keep track of my progress (or lack thereof) on the course, and I plan to include dozens of other ideas I have bouncing around in my head.
To each his own
So my solution to being a better blogger? I’m learning Python. It might not be the most logical solution, but for me learning something new and developing something will entice me to play with it and keep working on it. At this point I feel like I’ve learned to do almost everything I can think of doing with WordPress, and it’s a great tool for blogging, but when you try to turn it into a content management system you quickly hit its limits.
So it’s time to move on. Hopefully you’ll see a new Django-powered Bleikamp.com in the next few weeks.
11 responses so far ↓
2 Jan 2008 at 4:23 pm
Is there any particular reason why you chose Django over RoR?
2 Jan 2008 at 5:12 pm
Not really - just a desire to learn something new. I like that Django has a pre-built admin interface plus I already had Ruby on Rails installed so that would have been too easy
2 Jan 2008 at 10:33 pm
I set out to make a portal site using Wordpress as a CMS and found it to be quite good. However, it’s for a small site and you might want to do a lot more with your site.
I found this info really useful though.
Anywho, good luck. Learing new languages is a bit fun (when it works!).
2 Jan 2008 at 10:56 pm
Instead of going through all the work yourself, you might want to take a look at ExpressionEngine. I recently came across it and was floored by just how powerful it is as a CMS.
3 Jan 2008 at 4:02 am
You don’t just want to tumblog like all the cool kids?
Good luck to you guys with your new hotness–I want to hear more about it!
3 Jan 2008 at 7:19 pm
I agree with Kyle. ExpressionEngine is the best CMS I’ve used. But, I can also understand the want to learn something new like Django. I would love to learn something new like Django (I honestly don’t know much about it at all) or other language, but I just don’t think I have time to do everything I want to do with my websites plus learn some new language.
3 Jan 2008 at 10:56 pm
I have looked at ExpressionEngine before and I agree it looks like a good solution for a CMS.
There are dozens (maybe hundreds) of choices I could have made, I just picked one, probably somewhat arbitrarily, that offered a lot of room to customize and expand upon.
@Devin: I signed up for a tumblog, played with it, and was annoyed.
5 Jan 2008 at 12:03 am
HI, Ben
just wanna know ..what’s Django ? is that your template, Can I see?
btw RoR is nice man …
7 Jan 2008 at 2:07 pm
I’ve been learning ruby on rails in order to create web applications and was wondering how you function as a team? For example, who’s name is the site registered under, how do you guys divy up the profits if there are any, and how do you find local developers in your area? And how are you making money from your appmarkt site? I was looking through it and didn’t see any ads. Are you making money per application sold? thanks.
10 Jan 2008 at 11:09 am
some interesting options there. i went over to django and took a look and also at expression engine. amazing what’s out there. i like joomla, but am eagerly awaiting the newer version release. good luck on the new CMS!
12 Jan 2008 at 11:56 pm
@Arham: Django is a Python framework for the web developed by the people @ LJWorld.com - http://www.djangoproject.com
Jin - I don’t want to talk too much about the details, but we are a team that works remotely. We use a lot of 37signals products, split everything up equally, and were lucky in assembling a small group of like minded people.
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