Bits 'n Bytes

I’ve looked into another CMS alternative called “Joomla!“. Joomla, like Drupal and WordPress is PHP-based and open-source.

Joomla is a new offshoot of yet another CMS called Mambo. Mambo originally was a commercial product, but then went to open-source. Apparently the folks at the original company felt the Mambo development was going in the wrong direction and in an attempt to get the project under control infuriated their developer team. The old Mambo developers left and formed the new version of Mambo known as Joomla.

After playing with Joomla on OpenSourceCMS, I was very impressed with the slick management interface. It’s an important consideration because I want non-technical people to feel comfortable about updating the site content. But after reading some comparisons to Drupal, my impression is that Drupal may not look as pretty, but it has more flexibility.

The recommended setup for WordPress uses the Apache web server running under Linux. I had assumed this meant WordPress was not supported on other platforms. Although Linux might be the ideal solution, it didn’t particularly make sense for it the only system that could run a script based application.

Sure enough, delving a little deeper, I found that WordPress can be run on Windows. John Godley, the Urban Giraffe, has and excellent tutorial on installing WordPress on a PC. It doesn’t even look like using Apache is a requirement, there a a simpler solution that uses something called XAMPP Light. I even discovered a tutorial to install everything on the Mac. I am glad these options exist — even though I have nothing against Linux, I really didn’t want to go through the trouble of setting up a new system just to play with WordPress.

So I went ahead and installed Apache, MySQL and PHP using the WampServer on my laptop. It’s nice being able to play with the complete package. Nothing can be seen over the real network, but I can play with the options locally before going over to a hosted domain.

My next step will be to create a custom WordPress theme. I have an idea to paint a watercolor and scan it in for the header and background. That will be nice because I am getting behind on the assignments for my weekly painting class. Once I have something, I will post a screenshot in this blog.

Nothing much to say — I just wanted to see if I could send a post from my cell phone. I like the fact that you do not have to rely on the web to maintain your blog. There are many tools available to make it easy to update your site. I am using some dumb public domain app called Plogit. The Mac has at least three dashboard wigits you can use to write posts (plus numerous “normal” apps).

It looks like I hit a wall for now. It was interesting to try out blogging on WordPress.com, but to use the advanced features, I really need to install it on a hosted domain.

Another alternative is for me to install it on a Linux system. Trouble is, I don’t have a Linux system, so I don’t know if it is worth the effort to create one. I did just recently acquire a small PC from my company for $1, so I guess I could go out an get the latest version of Red Hat and give it a try.

On the other hand, it might just be easier for me to go get my own hosted domain. I found a place that will host a small site for $2 a month (GeekHosting). But I don’t know — that would be $24 a year and I am on a budget.

Once I have my own WordPress installation, my plan would be learn to create my own template. I want to be able to fully customize the web site. I would also like to have the site do more than just blog — I want to create a forum and perhaps sell merchandise. It’s still not clear to me if WordPress will allow me to do everything I want, so it might be worth the time to investigate other CMS software like Drupal.

I just noticed that there is a site dedicated for using Drupal for Artists and Musicians. One of my motives for looking into all this is for the benefit of my father (who is a musician) and my art teacher (who is an artist [duh]). I’ll be looking into this further.

Wow, the blog is almost two days old and no one has left any comments. Just joking, of course — I am not sure anyone but me will ever read this. But I would like to see how all the features work and it is no fun to comment to myself.

Alas.. it didn’t take too long to figure out that it is not possible to create a custom theme using WordPress.com as a host. I am not dead sure why this is not allowed. They must be concerned that allowing this would lead to some sort of abuse (but it’s not clear to me what that would be — probably some security concern).

This is not a limitation when hosting a blog on your own hosted domain. Naturally this is something you would want to do to give your blog a unique look. But for a free website, limited customization is something you have to live with.

Still, it is worth playing with blogs on WordPress.com because even if you host a WordPress blog on your on domain, the administration would be the same. The difference is that you would be able to upload your own plug-ins and themes.

Update»

WordPress.com now provides an upgrade to allow you to customize your blog’s CSS (Cascading Style-Sheet).  This effectively allows the blog to be given a unique design and appearance.  See their custom CSS FAQ for details.

Well, I created a blog using WordPress.com. I decided to use this theme (Regulus) for the time being, but I will be looking into creating my own almost immediately. I hope I am able to create my own themes for this site.

I must say one thing that impresses me is how easy it is to update the blog. You can change the whole appearance of the site just by selecting a new theme.