Is blogging software necessary?

[JohnnyJimJams]

Howdy all,

I'm looking into setting up a blog for my new site (see my signature).

As I understand it, a blog is just some small articles, organised into categories, with usually a few of the most recent posts displayed chronologically.

I have strong programming skills, and was just considering setting up my own 'blog' using mysql and php. My question (getting to the point) is:

Are there other functions of blogging software/platforms that I am missing? What else do they do? Or are they just "MS Word' for the net? Why are they necessary?

[Alex]

Originally Posted by JohnnyJimJams

Howdy all,

I'm looking into setting up a blog for my new site (see my signature).

As I understand it, a blog is just some small articles, organised into categories, with usually a few of the most recent posts displayed chronologically.

I have strong programming skills, and was just considering setting up my own 'blog' using mysql and php. My question (getting to the point) is:

Are there other functions of blogging software/platforms that I am missing? What else do they do? Or are they just "MS Word' for the net? Why are they necessary?

Well, if you can create your own blog program I suppose that is a way to go about it. Why would you spend the time and energy re-inventing the wheel? It's like saying you could re-create windows, why use Bill's version? I am not a programmer but I assume that by using a program like Wordpress you would be saving yourself ALOT of time. You will have a support system from their forums and chatroom and access to many plugins created by current users. It all comes down to time. Get your blog up and running asap.

[dor]

Originally Posted by Alex

Well, if you can create your own blog program I suppose that is a way to go about it. Why would you spend the time and energy re-inventing the wheel? It's like saying you could re-create windows, why use Bill's version? I am not a programmer but I assume that by using a program like Wordpress you would be saving yourself ALOT of time. You will have a support system from their forums and chatroom and access to many plugins created by current users. It all comes down to time. Get your blog up and running asap.

agreed. but sometimes getting wordpress to work how you want can take just as much time if you're good at php and have some 'modules' you can build from....

[icesar]

There are other important functions that blogging sofware fulfills. For example, allowing user comments, having a template structure to allow for easily changing design, the trackback and pingback mechanisms which allow you to automatically get links from other people's blogs, and a really good plugin platform (with thousands of plugins).

If you want a programming challenge then go ahead and write your own software. But if what you really want is to get into blogging, then I would say just install wordpress (with 1 click) and get to it!

[John Wesley]

Unless you're a great programmer willing to put in a lot of time and have very specific needs for your site, I don't see why you wouldn't use Wordpress when it's free, easy to use, and very functional.

Why not invest all that effort into creating content for your blog? Most readers won't even notice what CMS is running it.

[andrew]

The only reason I should see why you should is to:

1. Just to prove to yourself/employers you can
2. Hate what's out there
3. Different language (ror, asp, php etc)

[Lucas]

I was sorta having this dillema myself. I am attempting to make a website for my band. Its going pretty well, if not kind of slow. A friend of mine suggeted using Wordpress, which I have used on a blog before, but I dunno if I have the programming chops to make it look how my site looks, in terms of template. I want it to look more like a site than a blog, and have the blog be for news updates and such. The problem is, as I code the website from bottom up, I feel like I am learning things, but in wordpress I am hacking things out.

I am not sure what to do. Wordpress is powerful, but I am kind of a minimalist.

[dor]

Originally Posted by Lucas

I was sorta having this dillema myself. I am attempting to make a website for my band. Its going pretty well, if not kind of slow. A friend of mine suggeted using Wordpress, which I have used on a blog before, but I dunno if I have the programming chops to make it look how my site looks, in terms of template. I want it to look more like a site than a blog, and have the blog be for news updates and such. The problem is, as I code the website from bottom up, I feel like I am learning things, but in wordpress I am hacking things out.

I am not sure what to do. Wordpress is powerful, but I am kind of a minimalist.

it might take a lot of work but one advantage of wordpress is that there are pretty active and helpful user forums - chances are someone's had your problem before - i am working on my site with it and my problem was getting the page down to the simplest possible which was actually more work than adding stuff

[Baltar]

Originally Posted by JohnnyJimJams

I have strong programming skills, and was just considering setting up my own 'blog' using mysql and php. My question (getting to the point) is:

Are there other functions of blogging software/platforms that I am missing? What else do they do? Or are they just "MS Word' for the net? Why are they necessary?

The main point of a blog system is to allow you to add/edit content without writing any code, much like a CMS. Most people who have blogs would not be able to create something like WordPress. It does more than just manage content for you -- it also has a search feature and I believe it helps you submit your blog to blog listing web sites. It also provides RSS/Atom feeds. I've played briefly with WordPress and I found it to be pretty good.

I should also add that I'm a very experienced software developer. The most important thing I've learned over the years though is that the best code is code that is never written, or at least never written by you. In other words, if I have a chance to use something that already exists (a library, a scripting language, a standard markup language) which works without problems, I'll always use that instead of rolling my own. Most programmers probably don't realize that writing something is only a fourth of the whole process. The other three parts are: testing, debugging, and maintenance. In the end making something yourself comes at a great cost. Take it from me, I learned this the hard way.

Your time is much better spent working on things that aren't so generic that many other people have created them already. When I was younger and starting out in programming, I wanted to write everything myself. It seemed like the cool thing to do and a great way to show off to other programmers. I think the best software developers grow out of that mindset. In the real world it's far more important to get things done fast by whatever means necessary, and your customers won't care if you wrote it yourself outsourced it.

[John Wesley]

Lucas, one suggestion for your band's site. Why don't you make the home page a regular html page and then install a Wordpress blog on a subdomain like www.yourdomain.com/blog. This way you have your normal web page that you can make however you like and a blog to post news. This is what Steve Pavlina does and also what I do on my site.

[tobyhede]

I would definitely just use WordPress.

I make CMS and Ecommerce software for a living and I use WordPress on all my blog sites.

The time it would take to download and customise a WordPress template is much less than it would take to build your own system from scratch ... whatever path you take, you are going to end up building the HTML/CSS layout anyway. WordPress is pretty easy to hack together.

[JohnnyJimJams]

Thanks everyone, great advice.

As it turns out my host provides an automatic installation for wordpress, so it just took me 2 minutes to set it up.