My head's spinning.I'm experiencing scope bloat - no,
scope explosion - and I've only just begun.
I did a nice little set of use cases and
data flow diagrams that made things oh so simple. Then I started hunting around for examples of the various technologies and techniques I would need to build
thefraziers.org. My initial thought was to create a site that included:
1.) Blog-style rants, opinions, articles and updates, of personal, philosophical, political and special-hobby-related natures;
2.) Product reviews, focusing on software, books and websites;
3.) Outside content via RSS and other syndication technologies, drawn from news, opinion and blog sites;
4.) It's own syndication method for sharing content with other websites.
I envisioned starting with a Blogger-run site that would incrementally transform into something more and more customized and "mine". It would sit on a Linux/Apache/mySQL/PHP/XML foundation, eventually.
Then trouble walked in.
I guess it started when I began looking at the limitations of Blogger. I came quickly to the conclusion that I would have to replace Blogger. My initial instinct was to eventually write my own CMS, bit-by-bit replacing packaged solutions with home-grown ones, and at some point I'd have to write code to replace Blogger as an entry tool. Problem was, though, Blogger was already so restrictive (note: I
love Blogger nonetheless, and
heartily reccommend it to others who are interested in tinkering in autojournalism) that it appeared I'd have to ditch it almost immediately.
When I sat down to look at writting a replacement module for Blogger, I stopped myself and said, "Maybe I should check out already-existing Blogger alternatives that I can install and tweak on my own site." Such an alternative would have to be PHP-based, live off of mySQL, be fairly stable, and not cost me any money.
Well, after browsing and searching around, my head began to spin and I lost focus. Things I looked at included: PHPNuke, Post-Nuke, Geeklog, Personal Weblog, b2, Pivot-log, More Like This, drupal, monaural jerk, MKDoc, movabletype, Greymatter, and others. Many of them did not fit my criteria, but almost got me to
change my criteria. Some of them are huge CMSs in themselves.
Isn't writing my own CMS an insane and masochistic project, considering I only started messing with PHP in the last few months and haven't written ASP (or any other code) in more than two years?
Shouldn't I just plop something like Post-Nuke on the server, customize it, and then
just focus on content?
Or is the whole point of this exercise to
have fun writing code? Isn't that why I mapped out an incremental install-packages-then-replace-with-custom-code development schedule?
Do I really want
the hassle of tweaking a huge mass of interdependant code that I did not originally develop myself? Inevitably any drop-in CMS will handle things just-so-very-slightly not-the-way-I-want/need-it, and then I'll be asking these questions all over again, won't I?
Is mySQL really right for me?
What about postgres??
Are my scoffings at
Perl ignorant? Or are they ignorant
and correct?
XSL, CSS, custom PHP - my head kept circling uselessly around multiple approaches to the same basic abstraction problem. Was I throwing in a technology or technique somewhere just for its own sake?
Ditto for
SQL and XML.
And so it goes...
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