A few administrative things…
I am thinking that at some point in the future I may want to migrate to another blog host, or possibly to get myself a domain name of some kind, find a host, and use one of those blogging software to make a blog. It will be much more flexible, I’d imagine, than the current system, and it might allow for more user participation. If anybody has any ideas about what to use, how I should do it, etc (I know there are computer types reading my blog) feel free to make suggestions.
In the meantime, my girlfriend bought me a Xanga premium membership. This means that I can have a custom module on the left. I am thinking of putting links up, but bear with me… I’m slow.
I’m also slow about tagging old entries. This will, at least, provide some sort of navigation tool to the old posts. If you click on one of the tags (again on the left hand side) it will bring you to posts that have been tagged with that term. I haven’t finished tagging yet, as it’s a rather slow process, but I’m moving.
Not too much happened today with regards to tea, other than having tried a generic “English Breakfast” that was rather nice. I am hoping tomorrow I will have more time by myself to drink tea more seriously….
10 responses so far ↓
Phyllo // February 19, 2007 at 2:39 pm |
I’ve been contemplating about doing the same for a month or two ago, but haven’t had the time to do the research. I’m also open to any suggestions. Blogger seems to allow the posting of articles to our own domain, but i haven’t played around with the feature.
If you do want to obtain a domain name, http://www.godaddy.com is a good site to get it from. But that is as far as I can suggest constructively.
kibi_kibi // February 19, 2007 at 4:10 pm |
MarshalN,
There are quite a few options, you can use blogger or get your own slightly more custom yet similarly rich blog running via the many open source engines there are available. Something I have been considering is getting an unmanaged Linux VPS as they’re quite cheap these days, especially if shared between a few tea blogs and one has complete control to a few host domains, e-mail, high res tea pr0n etc… If a few of us are interested this might certainly be an option and I can help setup all the software/domains etc. It’s an option.
-vl.
stevendodd // February 20, 2007 at 2:39 am |
Meh, being the computer person I wrote my blogging software from scratch and it’s hosted on a friend’s server. I’m not really sure what is out there for software. Some poeple use http://sourceforge.net/projects/sphpblog/ which is what http://www.christianmuse.org/teablog/ uses.
MarshalN // February 20, 2007 at 7:58 am |
Well, gee, that’s useful, yeah, I’m going to write my own software :p
Sourceforge, I’ve heard about it. Lemme see…
kibi_kibi // February 20, 2007 at 8:32 am |
Actually thinking about it a bit more… I’d say go for Google Blogger, it’s got all the features of any custom installed blogging software (like WordPress.org, that might be the most developed one) without the fuss of having to fiddle with any specifics. It can also point (or forward?) a registered domain to your blog I think and the template is really very easy to edit.
By the way EO, I really like the way you designed your blog, the picture above with the tea things is really quite cool… 🙂
-vl.
HobbesOxon // February 20, 2007 at 10:38 am |
All of these systems seem to lack a good way to tie together reader comments. There’s something inherently unpleasant in knowing that one’s comments have a “reading life” of about three days, before they vanish. Perhaps a standard blog system, which links to a forum when comments are left? Then the comments for previous threads can be managed in some meaningful manner, rather than having them (effectively) disappear with every new entry.
I guessed that you wrote your own, Doddy. I like it!
Toodles,
Hobbes
MarshalN // February 20, 2007 at 11:08 am |
Google blogger has a fatal flaw — it is frequently blacked out in China, where I could spend a good amount of time in the future. Given that, I don’t want to use a service that can be blacked out when I’m in the home of tea.
stevendodd // February 20, 2007 at 1:50 pm |
Word press seems pretty cool. You are able to use their domain or even have it hosted by someone else with your own domain name. Not sure what the costs are or if they are reasonable.
MarshalN // February 20, 2007 at 2:12 pm |
WordPress is still, as of last week, blocked in China…
So WordPress it out too… I think.
wyardley // February 20, 2007 at 2:28 pm |
They block WordPress itself? WordPress is just software (software rather than a hosted solution), so unless they’re looking for specific strings in the URL or body of the page, you should be Ok. You wouldn’t even really necessarily need to be able to get to the main wordpress site to do it. You’d just need to sign up with a webhost that will let you install WordPress and then install it there.
My old work (http://dreamhost.com) has a one-click install of WordPress that you can setup pretty easily from within their web control panel.
Can you see this example:
http://njhockey.org (my brother’s hockey web log)
from where you are?
They’re pretty cheap, and pretty good (they’ve had some growing pains in the last year, but things seem on the up and up lately). Pair (pair.com) also has a stellar reputation as a shared webhost.
One thing to keep in mind – if you’re worried about China blocking stuff, most shared web hosts will stick you on an IP address with a lot of other customers – if any one of those customers does something to piss off the censors, you /might/ get blocked also (I say “might”, because the censors seem to use different methods of blocking sites, many of which block by hostname or even a specific URL, rather than blocking the IP address entirely). In any event, getting a unique IP address might be a good idea, so that you’re not accidentally associated with an objectionable site.