February, 21 2004

Casey asked me why I want to rewrite my blogging software, and why I don’t plan to use a CMS. Good question. The answer is that, in the face of current circumstances, it seems the “right” thing to do. Here are my current circumstances:

1. I've been using "Six Apart's Movable Type":http://movabletype.org/ for more than a year now. It is easy to use, reliable, and does its job well, so I recommend it to anyone looking for blog software.

   For the past few months though, I’ve had a hankering to create content that isn’t suited to a blog format—content such as thousand word essays, searchable notes on movies I’ve watched and a personal information manager.¹

   A CMS is probably exactly the right thing to solve this problem, but the size of CMS software frightens me. Zope looks about the same complexity as WebSphere Application Server—meaning about 40 hours of reading manuals, followed by six months hands-on before I knew all the nooks and crannies.

2. Blogging has made me more aware of the "protocol stack":http://w3c.org that makes up the web -- http, html, css, javascript and so forth. I've created plenty of web applications, but I want a more detailed understanding, so that I can stroke my chin and say things like, "Yes, well, in that case we'll need to return "410":http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/03/27/http_error_410_gone."
3. I have plans to explore Python with an eye to using it for commercial web development, and jazzing up my own website is a fun and useful way to start.
4. I spend 10 hours a week sitting quietly on a train. I have a laptop. I should be doing _something_.

¹ The first thing I’m going to do is get blogging working, of course. The second will be to get the Cardboard Checklists working again, and the third will be to write some documentation on the software, starting with collating all these “Blog Replacement” blog entries.