Duskrider's Blog

Well, it seems I've finally done it. I've finally joined the multitudes of blogging masses. I'm not quite sure I know what I've gotten myself into. At any rate, I hope at least someone finds this interesting, and perhaps even useful.

As you can see over there on the right, I plan to use this blog to talk about my experiences with this website, digital art creation, and the learning process that goes with any undertaking... even a hobby. I've tried a couple of blogs in the past and didn't really find them to my taste. It's not that I don't like to write, because I do, and it's not that I don't like to tell others of myself. I think it's more that I don't know that I ever had anything to say before that I thought others, especially internet strangers, would care to read about me.

I'm hoping that I offer up something worth reading to the ever so fickle internet surfer, and that perhaps I can drop some knowledge along the way.

So, since this is to be a blog about Web Design / Development as well as digital art, I suppose I can start by talking a little bit about this blog. The blog itself is Open Source software written in php with a mySQL database running the backend. The title is b2evolution, and I chose it because, for one it's free, and for two, it supports easily read urls so the search engines don't throw it up. It's amazing to me how important search engines have become, but that's a blog for another day. (Amazing, I already have stuff to write about another time, and this is only my first post.)

One of the other big reasons I chose this blog is because it's open source. Basically that means that I can go in, pull apart the code, mold it, shape it, and make anything I want out of it. Generally paid-for solutions just don't have that kind of flexibility, and certainly not at the individual user level. A good example is the fact that comments can be posted to this entry, but they aren't visible to anyone until I approve them. That wasn't an original feature of the blog software, it had to be added into the code. Fortunately, I found a thread at the b2evo forums that outlined just such a modification - so adding that functionality was easy. I made the blog that way (comments must be approved by me before publicly viewable) because there are an awful lot of spammers out there just dying to put their link anywhere - and an un-moderated blog is a great opportunity. Also, I've rated my site with the ICRA - basically like the ratings on movies and video games. That rating says that my site doesn't contain any language unsuitable for minors - and that can change pretty fast if you allow any old internet shmoe to post anything they want on your blog.

So, as far as I'm concerned, open source is the way to go. At least for a small website like mine. My photo gallery is also open source software which has been personalized and modified to my taste - coppermine photo gallery is the name. It's nice software, but a bit complex. Add to the complexity the fact that there is no real documentation for the code and things start to get hairy. That, however, is just part of the fun.

Enjoy,

-Ed