2006.01.13

Flipping the Switch

19.55.24 - Mark

When I started writing my own blogging engine a few months ago, I had three very clear goals.

Get off Blogger.
Keep my Content.
Keep the links working.

I met the first and second goals back in December when I flipped the switch here. The last goal has been sitting on the bench waiting to see if anything failed horribly here. Fortunately it hasn't, even if things need occasional fixing, so I just switched on my Blogger Redirect Engine.

Because I coded everything, it was really easy to set up a redirect engine by putting a HTML Refresh in my blogger template that points to the look up script. With the refering URL, it can instantly figure out where the user needs, no matter if it's my index page, an archive file, or a post and it moves them there. Nice and simple with no demand on the visitor.

It might have been possible with wordpress, but it would have been a lot more work, and I liked the challenge of coding my own blog engine. Control is good.

So long Blogger. You're great for beginners, but you gotta do something for your serious users.

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2005.12.31

Welcome to Blog 2.0

14.05.54 - Mark

After many hours of programming, many, many more hours fiddling around with the database, and a few seconds of changing some settings, I'm considering myself moved off of blogger.

I'd be yelling and screaming with delight (because I was extremely tired of blogger) but for as much work as I've put into this its actually very anti-climatic change over. The last couple of hours were spent fighting with a little navigation script and the blogger redirection tool (which I'll be waiting a couple of days to activate)

Let me know if anything fails horribly. I'm going to step away from the code for a day or two (I haven't opened up my RSS reader in a week)

And sorry for breaking the feedburner feed. Unfortunately it might happen again a few times as I work out kinks in the RSS script.

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2005.12.30

I think I'm here

01.40.03 - Mark

After a couple months of on and off work that equals at least a few full days of work, I think I've got my basic blog engine set up. All the posts are in a database, I have an index and an RSS feed, I've set up a complete archive with its own calendar navigation. I design I love and nearly everything I need for comments and post creation. As of this evening, everything worked on my local webserver, so I think everything has made it over to a semi-live server, and if things like my posting engine check out, I'll formerly announce it on my "other, soon-to-be-former, blog" (however I still need to write the redirection engine to completely match my original goals in this move)

I'll be writing some other add-ons, like some administration, podcasting, and tagging tool tools, but for now I'll be happy if I can make all of this work and finish my move. I kind of miss my blogging habit.

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2005.12.22

Blogger Exile Progress

18.55.00 - Mark

I figured that I needed to make an update of sorts so here goes. I've moved all of my posts (give or take this one) into a database which was a royal pain in the ass (something like 4 or 5 long evenings). I then spent most of a night (all night) writing and running scripts to reformat what I pulled out of blogger to make everything ready for a custom blog engine, which after a few hours nap I managed start on. Right now I need to

1) Work out and write the code for all the archives (months and posts at least), once I figure out mod rewrite I think I might have it
2) Write RSS feed engine. I think this will be fairly simple since I've got the index working, its just a matter of fixing it.
3) Work in comments. I'd kind of like to try my hand at some AJAX like functionality here, but I'm not sure thats going to happen. Even if it doesn't I still need to add in the comment code
4) Beef up security and posting features. The scripts I wrote to move the database will help, but they are very, very crude, and certainlly not something I can post on a server
5) Work out the blogger redirect engine, this is low priority
6) Move the database and all the code over to the domain.
7) Build and expand. What's the point of custom coding a blogging engine if all you're going to do is write it and forget it?


I'd like to say I'll launch by the new year, but I had been telling myself that I'd be done by my birthday as well, and while that pushed me to finishing the DB and getting the main rendering code up and running, its since passed (aside: December birthdays generally suck, December birthdays within a week of xmas, really suck.)

We'll see. I'm out of school until the 5th, while I've got a pile of DVDs and video that almost rivals my podcast queue on top of whatever the 25th brings. If I decide to go to podcastercon (I'm up in the air about it), I'll really want to have something launched. This one feels a little ratty, and I feel a little cheap when I hand out the URL.

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