Angry Robot

Yet More Dull Site News

What’s been happening around here? I went to Wisconsin, which was
tornado-tastic! Other than that, mostly I’ve been preparing a new design and
shopping around for a new blog system. First I was thinking EE, then <a
href=”http://www.wordpress.org”>WordPress, but both of them are in dire
need of some user manual action. Now I’m thinking <a
href=”http://www.textpattern.com”>TextPattern. Thrilling huh? If you
actually think so, read on!

I have a very specific site architecture in mind, and for some dumb reason
the URLs have to match. I want sankey.ca/d/photo to be the photo site with
only photos, /blog/ be only blog entries, /brief/ will hold shit like quick
links and one line film reviews, and so on. However, I want sankey.ca/d/ to
have a reverse-chronologically ordered listing of all of the above, href=”http://www.kottke.org”>J-Ko stylee. Thing is these entries have to
be presented differently depending on whether they are photos, quicklinks,
or what. I know WordPress can do it as founder href=”http://www.photomatt.net”>Matt’s site is rockin’ that look, and EE
can presumably do that and a lot more.. but damned if I’m going to learn PHP
just to sort that shit out. I mean c’mon.

Now I was always disappointed that Dean Allen forewent href=”http://www.textism.com”>textism in favour of making a CMS, textpattern. He was kind of an inspirational blogger for me, I guess, and it bugged me that he wasn’t writing anything anymore, and I viewed textpattern as sort of a waste of time. But it was a fucking revelation to look at it the other day. Now it doesn’t have a manual (it’s still in ‘gamma’,) but it’s so freaking well thought out, and importantly, from a writer’s point of view. It’s a thing of beauty. Moreover the thing I want to do, well textpattern’s ‘section’ concept is designed to accomplish just that. No tinkering or what have you.

Ante-ceding that revelation was another, awesome! discovery: TextDrive. Dean is starting a hosting company, and rather than get venture capital involved he put out an irresistible offer. $200 for a year of hosting, with the best specs I’ve seen (1GB space / 10gigs transfer / 20 mySQL databases / IMAP / WebDAV / more). After that… free hosting. For as long as his company exists. Basically, if it lasts two years it’s a awesome deal, and if it lasts longer, it keeps getting awesomer. So yes I got in on that shit and am now one of the ‘VC 200’. Deal’s closed now, but I’m sure the introductory rates will be also be rock n’ roll.

Dominate!

What I will do is set up the new server and tinker with a new textpattern installation thereon. When it’s all ready to rock, and I’ve seamlessly moved ÿ and king, I’ll switch up the DNS and we can all revel in the new glory. Should be a couple weeks at least, as I still have tons of designing/migrating to do. So if I don’t say much here, that’s why.

2 comments on "Yet More Dull Site News"

  1. josh says:

    I got in on that hott Dean action, too, even though I’ve been perfectly happy with MT and my webhost and even though my site is so dumbed-down at this point that I hardly even need a CMS, let alone 20 MySQL databases whatever those are. But I’m not made of stone, man.

  2. D says:

    Yeah, sort of the same story. I’m very happy with my existing host; the only things I’m missing are IMAP and WebDAV, really. But hey, you gotta live the dream.

    Josh, have you looked at textpattern? I think you’d diggit.

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