I've been quite busy with the site lately. Since the major update to
the new code, I've been making a lot of changes. I've recently added
more CSS skins to the site. They aren't totally mature yet; but it's a
great start.
I've also been making a lot of internal improvements. The photo catalog program is entirely new; as is the blogging engine.
For those of you interested; I've switched to Presstopia for my blogging software. It's a open-source (Apache License) blogging package for ASP.Net. I also looked at DasBlog,
but ultimately chose Presstopia. Presstopia is very easy to modify.
In fact, I'm running a customized version of it on the site right now.
It's also very flexible from a database standpoint. It's nice to have
choices. It gives me a lot of flexibility that I can read and write to
Presstopia's database directly. This was very helpful for migration of
the old blog postings; and for the direct interface used on the
Barnyard BBS pages.
I use a different approach to blogging that most folks. I want a blog to be part of my site; but I don't want the blog to be the site. Lots of blogging packages are excellent; but they dominate your site.
For reference, I wrote some custom code that reads from the blog and
merges it into the website design. I used to use a blogging engine
that I wrote myself; but Presstopia offered some features that I really
didn't have time to develop by myself.
Regarding DasBlog.... It really is an excellent package. I like it's
unique XML storage system. It does not use a database at all, but
rather many individual XML files. This would be really cool in a
hosted environment, or where you don't have good database access. It's
very intuitive. I really wanted to use DasBlog. But at the end of the
day, Presstopia was just too easy to modify, and the direct database
access was too convenient.
This brings me to an interesting topic. It is vitally important that
information be "forward portable". I don't care how easy it is to
enter information into a system, if you cannot get it out with the same
ease. A lot of people are falling into this trap these days.
A prime example of this is Blogger. It's a beautiful service. It's
pretty. It's easy. However, there is no direct access to your data.
You could migrate it; but it would be a highly manual process of
working from the generated HTML. I really don't intend to be negative
towards Blogger (owned by Google, these days). It's a great service,
and it's free.
Forward portability of information is critical any time you are
creating content. Content doesn't just mean blogs. It can mean lots of
things. For example, documents, research, web content, or contact
information. I don't know about anyone else, but I've got years of
effort into my contact database. I wouldn't want to lose all that work.
Cell phones are a big culprit in this area. Most people never consider
the contact information they enter into their phones. Remember, before
you make any large time commitment on any content project, have an exit
strategy. Know where you're going. For example, the contact data that
I have in my PDA / phone is frequently exported to a CSV file (text
format file). I chose CSV because it's totally vendor neutral. I can
import or convert this file into whatever I may need in the future. I
suppose I could use XML, but that would just be bandwagon jumping.
Update: 01/12/2007
Although Presstopia served me well, I've converted to using my own blogging system exclusively. It's implemented entirely as an XHTML / CSS compliant Asp.Net control. It gives me all the flexibility I've wanted and also addresses my modularity and accessibility concerns. If you're wondering what it looks like, you're probably looking at it already.