

Ask News.YC: What things do you hate and love of your blog platform? - german

I've been thinking about blogging, I use wordpress but there are a lot of annoying little things, however, I love the flexibility  that plugins give.
 <p>What things do you hate and love of your blog platform?
======
bootload
I got so peeved at the crap platforms (well there not all crap but they
certainly have lots of restrictions) that I wrote my own. My own efforts are
just as crap but it's my crap. I can fashion my tools to work the way I want
it instead of how someone else decided. For example I need something that I
could (can)

\- write/edit with a worst a text editor or best an web ui

\- ability to markup in a meta format

\- access to the source in a language(s) I use

\- good db access tools

\- ability to evolve and add new layers or technologies

I also have some quirky requirements. I want static pages primarily (at least
at the moment). I care more for load speeds and readability than the ability
to interact RT. (currently process interaction on delayed batch close to RT).
For all the disadvantages this has a few advantages namely speed and fewer
moving parts exposed.

My first effort was a Perl script transforming POD (Plain Old Text) files into
markup. The next effort is a Python app using Django to store RestructuredText
(python based plain text markup) markup in a MySQL db spitting out valid xhtml
static pages. And I've already got a third system in mind using various
editors with a light weight middleware web server using a db for backup but
exporting to atom (something like <http://bitworking.org/projects/1812/> ) and
serving a combo of static pages and dynamic using some browser/Javascript
approach.

Probably the most important thing is how it handles the data. To tell you the
truth I don't really care too much about the tools because I throw or discard
them like skins every couple of tech iterations. It's the data that's
important. I care more about:

\- ways to export the data safely for future use

\- ability to add historical entries as I find them out there on the web or
locked up in some roach motel of a web app

\- re-publishing fragments of data somewhere else to some (or thinking of
publishing to some as yet to exist site) other place

\- making additions, corrections and upgrading the content over time

I'm finding the current batch of blogging tools worry less about these types
of ideas ( _"with the exception of say Dave Winer & scripting.com who lets
face it have more history than most blogs & toolsets than most"_) than they
should. After you get a stack of entries, say 10 years worth the tools need
more sophisticated approaches to handle and evolve how you

\- generate

\- edit, manipulate

\- store

\- distribute

the _"foobar"_ things you create.

I also get peeved at the way most blogging tools (and most content generation
tools) seem to think of blogs as pages and not data that can be transformed
into _"foo"_ format and edited, stored in some meta format capable of being
transformed.

So in short I love defining my own toolset. I hate the fact it takes lots of
thinking, time, effort and sweat. I hate the fact the tools are constantly
evolving and are less polished than I know they could be.

I care more about my data than the tools I create and use.

~~~
jsackmann
I also recently wrote my own blogging platform (in Python). It's really simple
-- no web UI for me (yet, anyway), and the whole thing is contained in a few
hundred lines of code.

That said, I already like it better than Wordpress. (Which I was using
before.) I don't have comments, but I didn't want them anyway. People have
written Wordpress plugins for virtually every need I might ever have, but
plugins are a pain to deal with for problems that I can now solve in 3 lines
of code.

~~~
bootload
_"... I also recently wrote my own blogging platform (in Python). It's really
simple -- no web UI for me (yet, anyway), and the whole thing is contained in
a few hundred lines of code. ..."_

This is sort of a geeks rite of passage. Some I can think of

\- spolsky citydesk ~ <http://www.fogcreek.com/CityDesk/>

\- bray custom perl scripts ~ <http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/misc/Colophon>

\- dave winer ~ <http://www.outliners.com/>

\- trotts ~
[http://www.sixapart.com/about/corner/2004/05/its_about_time....](http://www.sixapart.com/about/corner/2004/05/its_about_time.html)

\- ev williams - <http://www.blogger.com>

\- Fitzpatrick ~ <http://brad.livejournal.com>

_"... I don't have comments, but I didn't want them anyway. People have
written Wordpress plugins for virtually every need I might ever have, but
plugins are a pain to deal with for problems that I can now solve in 3 lines
of code. .."_

One thing I found was you really think carefully before you create something.
I've shunned comments as well (constraints I've chosen) only choosing static
pages. The advantages for such a low volume site are speed & reliability.
Though I have thought having a feedback loop would be nice have yet to really
come to grips how (having no RT server based processing).

I'll let you know the url of the colophon when I release my site.

------
nailer
At VentureCake we use WordPress.

Wordpress has very limited WYSIWYG support. Also there's no paste special, so
when I paste a formatted doc without going via gedit I get a bunch of
formatting I don't want.

Some of the plugins, like the captchas, should be there by default. Otherwise
your blog will be inundated with Spam.

There doesn't seem to be a good way to mark comments by specific users so
they're always highlighted. VentureCake has had comments by Alan Cox, the
Twittr developers, and Mike DiPetrillo from VMware. There's no way to
highlight these specific comments (or other, cool outstanding ones) by
default. There's a plugin I tried, but I didn't work.

The ability of some users to post without moderation, or edit their comments
anytime.

Plugins add their menus in different places. I can't always find out where a
plugin has added itself until I read it's documentation.

I have to resize images for thumbnails and apply effects (like reflections)
myself manually in GIMP first.

~~~
paulgb
If I remember, Askimet (anti-spam plugin) is included by default. Captchas for
blog spam are usually a bad idea anyway, IMHO, because blog spammers are
generally not targeting specific blogs, so even the smallest of obstacles is
usually enough to make a spammer go somewhere else. Captchas just add an extra
obstacle for the commenter.

Edit: just noticed that Askimet is only free for personal use, so I guess it
doesn't help everyone that it is included by default.

Edit 2: by the way, I agree about the plugin menus.

------
drewp
newsbruiser:

pretty friendly install and web config

can't avoid running it as cgi, which sucks

once I decided to make my entries in restructured text (huge mistake), I can't
easily change to using regular html for new ones, which is what I want. Half
my entries include an apology for not being able to present some fancy
escaping correctly or for screwing up my links. I just want to use xinha! This
is likely the issue that will finally cause me to switch blog systems.

spam comments have corrupted stories in the past. A look at the gross NIH
article file format will show you that comments-corrupting-stories would not
be surprising

anti-spam comment system is too hard to get right. I'm currently on the side
of "reject all good comments" and I don't know how to get to a better state

it has tags, but I can't provide an RSS feed for a single tag, which I'd
really like

it's in python, which is why I chose it, but the barrier to writing patches or
plugins (e.g. per-tag rss feeds, or per-article input syntaxes) is too high

each blog gets a large number of scattered data files, including some dotfiles
(why?!), which can make it hard to reorganize blogs or get the perms right
when you move everything to a new NFS drive

Thanks for asking!

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herdrick
(Blogspot) It has all the features I wanted. But it kinda looks like crap.

