Too Many Choices
I have spent a silly amount of time lately contemplating what I want in a
blogging engine/system/platform/thing. I know one thing: Drupal, the system I
am currently using, is not it. It’s a fine content management system. In
fact, I use it as a content management system for another site, and I am quite
happy with it. However, it’s much more than what I need. I mean,
honestly, I inconsistently publish a few thoughts with some code. I do NOT
need a content management system. So, what do I need?
WordPress … ?
Woo! WordPress! It’s awesome, isn’t it? Everyone uses it, so it must be
good. I have been inside of it, and it seemed nice. It was pretty. It has a
plugin for everything, I hear. I know that a lot of people use it as their
content management system. Wow!
Therein lies the problem. WordPress is just big enough to be used as a
content management system. It does just enough to allow some smaller sites to
utlitize it to manage their whole site. When I look at WordPress, it still
seems bigger than my needs. It does too much. It’s got a great community.
I’m sure I could make it do less, or make it do more. It would probably work
satisfactorily. I don’t want to be satisfied, though. I want to be stoked!
So, forget WordPress.
Static Blogging Engines
I am a huge freakin’ nerd. You know what I want? I want to generate all
of my blog posts via the command line. I think I’d like to run rake blog:post FILE=some_file.mkd to post a new article. I think I
would like my blog to be completely managed from the command line… or, at
least, mostly managed from the command line.
I am progressing to this end already. I write my posts in Vim using Markdown
syntax. Next, I run markdown blog_post_file_name.mkd.
I copy the output, and paste it into the text box in the administration portion
of my blog. I really would be happy doing it all from the command line. On
top of all this command-line geekery, the static XHTML pages – generated from
such a system – tend to be fast. Although I don’t expect me to ever say
anything so spectacular, were I to ever get SlashDotted or Digged or Reddited
or even HackerNewsed, I would not need worry. That is comforting.
Note:Having not used the following options extensively to create an actual
blog, it feels a bit dirty to criticize, but I’m going to do it anyway. You’ve
been warned!
Hobix is sort of the big name in static blogging, as far as
Ruby-based systems go. Hobix was initially written by Why the Luck Stiff, and
powers RedHanded (his abandoned Ruby coding website). Hobix is not too heavily
developed any longer, from what I can tell. Following the instructions on
hobix.com for installing Hobix and getting started resulted in an error. It is
recommended to try the latest development version. I will.
Then there’s Rassmalog, which has actually been updated recently.
(As of this writing, it was last updated June 8th, 2008. The user guide was
updated on June 22nd, 2008. Wow! Code and documentation updates!
Very nice!) It seems to be a well planned solution, and the comprehensive user
guide is impressive. It offers, initially, email based comments. However,
Rassmalog’s site also describes how to use the JS-Kit comment system. I am
sure one could use Disqus as well. More on comments and third party comment
systems later. One final thing to note is that Rassmalog source is available
via a darcs repository.
Last, but not least, the engine called Webby. Not to be confused
with the Webby awards. Note that the name makes searching for obscure blogs
that use Webby difficult, as so many people enjoy blogging about the Webby
awards. In any case, Webby has a few features, it appears, that Rassmalog
doesn’t have, such as LaTeX support, and something about Graphviz. These
features are also things that I probably wouldn’t use. However, I would
potentially use HAML & SASS, as well as Textile, or maybe Markdown, or maybe
something else. I’m saying it wouldn’t be a bad thing to have all of these
options. (Did I not just get done saying I wanted less options? I’m all over
the place here.) Webby does not have a built in comment system of any sort, but
people have used Disqus successfully. I’m sure other systems would work fine
as well. Worth mentioning is that Webby is on GitHub.
Update:
Oh! I just stumbled upon git-blog. It’s so
geeky, I certainly can’t resist at least trying it, right? Simple posting.
Automatic versioning. Git. It is definitely worth a look, for geekery’s sake.
Comments and Comment Systems
I have heard some people question whether comments on blogs are necessary. In
fact, I can think of at least one well-respected card-carrying Ruby community
member who eschews blog comments completely. (I am looking at you, Rein
Henrich.) Why? Perhaps spam became unbearable. Maybe he just
didn’t want to deal with comments potentially spiraling out of control and
becoming a 4chan-like dehumanized zone of ridiculousness. Maybe he gets plenty
of feedback via IRC, Twitter, et al. There’s nothing wrong with it. I do,
however, disagree strongly.
Blog comments are, often enough, the best part of a blog post. How many times
have you placed a search engine request, visited a blog that seemed to fit your
keywords well, and found that, indeed, the answer you wanted was actually
contained in the comments to the original post, rather than in the post itself?
I love that. It restores one Link-heart worth of faith in humanity and
community. In addition to that, I often learn something from people commenting
on my blog posts. I mean, sure, sometimes what I learn is that there’s a new
cream that is guaranteed to make my nights more exciting, but that is
something. What about this comment on one of my blog
posts? Useful. Comments are necessary.
Now that we have established the indispensability of comments, how should they
be posted? Disqus has become a popular solution to comments. Disqus takes
much of the burden of dealing with spam, and the other responsibilities of
managing or writing your own comment system. In exchange? They have your
data. Oh, and your comments are not going to get indexed by, say, the GOOG,
because they are dynamically placed in your page via some Javascript. The same
goes for JS-Kit, and probably others in that niche. I want that data, and I
want it indexed. How are people to find the helpful comments? I am sure you
have a retort readily prepared, dying to flow from your fingertips. Please,
feel free to leave a comment. However, the bottom line is that it doesn’t sit
well with me. So, man-in-the-middle comment system? Just say no!
(A couple interesting links related to blogs and comments from people I respect: Tim Bray just before he had a commenting system, and Sam Ruby’s advice to Tim Bray on a commenting system. Enjoy.)
I will figure out a way to manage my own comments. This will probably mean comment content ultimately ending up in my inbox before they are made public. I will decide how spammy they are, and then I’ll
post them. (Hopefully by typing ‘rake comment –FILE=some_file’ or something.) There will need to be some initial filters in place, of course. Anyway, we’ll see.
So…
I’m looking at Rassmalog and Webby, mostly. I think I might end up going with
Webby, and gluing some sort of hacked together comment script on to the bottom
of the thing. It should last for a while. Maybe a PHP script. Or, a Ruby
script maybe? Will I need a little Rack-based app?
Is this what you would do? Are you perfectly happy with WordPress, and you
think I’m insane (unsurprised, on both counts)? Let me know. Comment.
Please?