timsellers.net/blog

08/04/07 : Blogger - ditched!

When I first started writing a blog (this one) I used blogger. It did the job and was easy to set up and use. It always had flaws though. The commenting system which they eventually introduced sucked (I've always used other methods). They've only just got round to allowing you to categorise posts - and that sucks too. And if you edit an old post your feed gets screwed up.

I thought about writing my own blogging platform using PHP to prove how clever I was. Unfortunately it turned out that I wasn't that clever after all. [UPDATE: I become clever at a later date].

I looked at Wordpress and Movable Type but they seemed a bit complicated. Quite by chance I found Thingamablog - and I'm amazed it's not more popular. It runs on your PC, allowing to write posts and edit setting offline. You can write different templates for posts, archives and categories. There are no inbuilt comments, but the template tags are similar to blogger's so Blogkomm works with just a few alterations to the code.

A highly recommended bit of software. There's even a slight chance that it will encourage me to write more often.