I wandered back and forth through the valley of blog time-sink darkness while the siren songs of Django, Pylons, ExpressionEngine, TextPattern, and Tumblr tempted my weary soul. “Install me,” they swooned. “I’ll fill your blog with unimaginable goodness.” Torn apart, I slinked back to my Wordpress install to regroup… Read More
Wordpress: Not so Bad After All
Tagged blogging, django, expressionengine, pylons, textpattern, tumblr, wordpress Discuss →
Blogs that Stand the Test of Time
February 5, 2008
in Meta
Most blogs arrange their content chronologically. For many blogs, strict chronological ordering perfectly matches the type of content they produce; after all, the name “blog” originated from the term “weblog”, which was a type of journal or diary. Journals are inherently date-based.
Chronological ordering, though, seems to work against the type of content I want to create; it forces older articles into the recesses of the web in order to promote newer stories.
When I post something online, I’d like to put a lot of thought into each post. The blog world is filled with people reposting and linking to information from other sources; if I’m going to post something, I’d like it to be an interesting reflection on my part. Usually, those types of posts aren’t made obsolete by the passage of time.
Consider the typical scenario: I’ll post (what I consider to be) a long, thought-through article; perhaps a few close friends of family will read it. But as soon as I post another article, the old article gets shoved down the homepage and starts to gather cobwebs in the corners of the forgotten internet; people tend to read only the most recent post, and it’s rare that useful discussion or insight comes from people reading older posts.
I find Paul Graham’s article structure much more intuitive. Rather than allowing new content to become obsolete through the passage of time, his content is organized as a collection of articles or essays. Each article still retains a “date of creation”, but that date only serves as a reference point; the content of the articles reigns supreme.
It’s not very useful or interesting for people to read trivial details about my daily life; even my family wouldn’t be interested in those details once they’ve fallen into the past. Rather, by posting more interesting content and organizing it with the content more important than the posted date, my own site has a better chance at surviving the sands of time.
To accurately represent that type of content, I might need to shuffle the structure of the site. Readers should be able to see a collection of higher-quality articles I’ve written, and should be able to browse them easily.
Something like a “featured articles” list, placed in a prominent spot, would be a good start at a more time-proof personal website.
I know I don’t have many readers right now (if any), but perhaps this will help gain a more solid audience. For those of you who are reading this, you can subscribe to new posts here, and receive notification of new posts either via e-mail or via a RSS feed. You’re welcome to leave a comment on any of my posts if you have the inclination.
Tagged articles, blog, chronological 1 Comment →
A theme to call my own
January 15, 2008
in Meta
I had some time yesterday to tinker around with (Adobe) Fireworks, and I was able to crank out a theme for this site entirely of my own design. As I mentioned in a prior post, I’ve always been displeased with the themes I’ve used in the past, primarily because it wasn’t my own creation.
I expect to change it and enhance it over time; right now it’s very minimialistic. That’s what makes it cool, though: It’s mine, and it’s something I can call my own.
Resisting Perfection
November 6, 2007
in Meta
Two years ago, I began my initial attempt at blogging.
In 2005, blogging was a major buzzword in the tech industry. At that time, many considered it a fad. While blogging is still an important part of online culture, I think it has begun to establish itself as a more permanent fixture of web culture.
In the past two years, I have made several attempts to post regularly, but in each case I’ve only lasted a short while. I plan to give this another try.
I think part of the reason I’ve had trouble keeping up is that I’ve searched for perfection.
I wanted a weblog system which would stand the test of time… a formatting scheme which would be readable and convertible well into the future. Online systems like blogger store your entries in their own databases, and I was not confident that I would be able to extract them for archival in the future. I want a weblog to be accessible and transferrable to any future medium.
But for now, I think I have found a comfortable compromise. I host this site on my own server, and I can retrieve the posts as needed. Thanks to Wordpress’s popularity, I can be sure that there will be converters to other formats in the future.
Design is another reason I haven’t consistently updated my website. I haven’t been able to spend the time to create a design which truly represents me; I have modified templates to some success, but I had not found a design which I could consider acceptable for long-term use on my site. Part of my career exploration involves web design, so I would like to be the creator of my own site’s design.
For the moment, though, I am going to try to relax my standards, because content should be the primary base for any site. I can change and create a new design later; but I can start creating content now. I know how to script using Python and other tools; I can convert my site to any future system if I need to.
In terms of content, I have struggled with what type of content I want to be made public: Should this site contain only technological posts, in case I use it as I become more involved in the tech field? Would it be good or bad to include personal-themed (i.e. non-tech) content in such a site?
For now, I think I should use this site to represent me — as an individual and as as a professional. After all, it is named after myself; I may as well allow myself the freedom to create content related to all aspects of my own life. Separation of content can be done through categories in software — I can always separate or branch off sections later. The primary hurdle will be creating content in the first place.
I have considered creating varying “permission levels” for users who register at the site; for instance, I could set posts in a “family” category to only be viewable by subscribers whom I designate as family. I may play with these ideas later on — after all, I can change these settings at will.
With that, I begin another foray into the blogging world; perhaps I can allow this to become a more regular aspect of my life. Time will tell.
Tagged blogosphere, me Discuss →
