Next Generation Blog Software

Published 10 September 04 by Justin French, 4 comments

Here’s some quick examples:

• spell-checking, alerts and inspiration/relation of comments
• unique presentation of dates and times (eg “early evening” for posts and “1 hour after the fact” for comments)
• a panoramic illustration based on live XML weather feeds
• cleaver presentation of code, images, and conversations (including simple XML transformations)
• simple summaries (eg “178 words, 8 images”)

This is made possible because he has chosen to write his own CMS software, rather that settling for an out-of-the-box solution like Textpattern, WordPress or Movable Type. Sure, a lot of this could be achieved with plug-ins and hacks to the source, but by starting with a clean slate, Dunstan’s content and ideas are not limited in any way by his choice of software – they’re actually defining the software.

Of course not everyone has the multidisciplinary skills (or time) to write their own CMS, but I think more and more web designers are turning into web application developers… PHP is easy to pick up (with a plethora of tutorials and open source applications to study), and new application frameworks like Ruby on Rails will certainly help more and more people write great software with less code.

It’s my hope that more and more of us (myself included) take the time to write our own blog/CMS software that does exactly what we want, rather than settling for what’s already available, and working within those constraints.

Instead of everyone releasing monolithic, bloated applications which promise to please everyone and do everything that the other applications do, I hope to see true “points of difference” in the options available.

Instead of asking “which blog/CMS software is best or most popular?”, we’ll ask “which blog/CMS software lets me work the way I want to work?”.

Whilst there’s not much hope of Dunstan releasing his work, Ryan Brill is gearing up to release TypeSpace, and I look forward to seeing many more options in the near future – perhaps even a release of my own!