olivier deheurles

Round One : Online Service VS personal blog publishing platform

I read quite a lot of blogs but I must admit than I’ve never looked which tool was behind. After lurking on some of my favorites blogs and some searches on google, I found that there are 2 main ways to make a blog… excluding developing one myself

• register to an online Blog service, like Blogger, MySpace, etc…
• or host the blog myself and use a personal blog publishing platform (preferably open source)

The second one is more interesting for me : I can customize it if required, I’ve access to the Database so I can migrate the Blog elsewhere and it allow me to do lots of other geek’s stuff.

Ok, I’ve chosen, I WILL USE THAT ! Mhh, but which one ?

Round Two : .NET/SQL Server VS PHP/MySQL

As I’m a .NET developer, I first tried to find an ASP.NET solution and found the Subtext project (used by one of my favorites blogger : Ayende Rahien ). But this solution did not seem perfect to me :

• this is not as easy to find a host for an ASP.NET/SQL Server solution than it is for a PHP/MySQL one,
• I found more mature (more functionalities) and active projects in the PHP/MySQL world.

Final Round : Dotclear VS WordPress

I found two interesting solutions : Dotclear and WordPress. After installing EasyPHP I set up both solutions locally and start playing with them. I’ve to admit that my final decision came quite fast because WordPress is really an impressive product :

• very intuitive, easy to configure and really smart,
• the WYSIWYG text editor contains everything required to edit a post and every function can be accessed with a keyboard shortcut,
• possibility to create pages : these are not included in the blog’s ticket flow but are accessible with the menu. I plan to use them to host more “advanced” documents than simple blog tickets.
• I found a theme (skin) that i like on Fahlstad site : http://www.fahlstad.se/themes/ (the fspring one)
• LOTS of plugins