Rant

Why is there never ONE application that does everything I want it to do? I've been trying out different blogging platforms, just to see what's out there. And now I'm satisfied with none of them.

Blogger - I love the ability to easily customize the template. I struggle with the CSS a little, but I understand generally how it works and I can play around with it enough to finally get stuff to do what I want it to. BUT, no tags/categories. How Google hasn't introduced them yet, I can't imagine...even if they insist on calling them "labels" ala gmail and GoogleReader, that's fine. (Note: I've got tags right now because someone came up with a workaround that uses del.icio.us, which works in a way, but is certainly not ideal.) Also, I'm not crazy about way comments are done (e-mailing me when I post a comment on my own post is not really helpful...however, e-mailing me when someone responds to a comment I made on someone else's post would be...this is partially a problem of me being used to the Livejournal threaded comments world).

Livejournal - As indicated above, I like the way LJ does comments. It's easy to carry on full conversations, and multiple ones off each post, because they're threaded. Also, comments in response to either my posts or comments are e-mailed to me, and I can even respond to comments from the e-mail notification without needed to go to the site. BUT, LJ is community-oriented, which is good sometimes, but not always. The "friends" concept is good, if people are really your friends, but because of the atmosphere of friendship, it makes it odd to read people's journals if you don't know them, or for people you don't know to be reading yours. Also, the atmosphere is very casual and, well, a journal is different from a blog. It just is.

Wordpress - I REALLY like a lot about Wordpress. I like the interface, I like the categories, I like the widgets. In fact, I would totally go with Wordpress, BUT you can't customize the layout AT ALL. Unless you download the open source php documents and install them on your own server and run it like that. Which I was like, okay, I'll try that. Because I need customization. Except I don't know php. (I've got a tutorial book which I am about ten pages in on, and doing okay aside from the fact that the MySQL database I set up won't connect. Or something. I don't even know, because I don't know databases.) So I thought, well, there's documentation on how to install it, that'll walk me through how to get it up and running. Right? Wrong. Because, well, it's written for people who already know how to get it up and running, apparently. *whoosh* over my head. ("open up the config file and plug in your database connection details"--first I need a tutorial on how to set up a database! I started one, on my host dreamhost.com, but it's blank and I don't know how to do anything else to it, and when I tried to upload the php files to it, it said they were all written wrong or something. Dreamhost also assumes that if I'm setting up a database I must know how to handcode in SQL.)


So here's the deal. There is no single consumer product that does everything I want to do. (This is not just true for blogging platforms, incidentally, but also for film sites, book sites, mapping sites, etc.) It seems they are either aimed at complete non-geeks who don't even realize that the sites could have more functionality, or at total geeks who can handcode their own mashups without a hitch. Being a half-geek is a total drag. All I want from a blogging platform: templates to start from, but which are fully customizable without knowing how to handcode php; tags/categories; better comment management; and one I forgot to deal with earlier, a way to lock content down from unauthorized viewers (lj does this quite well, and I think Wordpress also has a password function, but Blogger, I think, does not).

I know I keep saying I'm going to learn php and SQL and all this stuff, but I'm not sure book-learning is going to cut it here, and I'm not really in a place where I can take off work to take classes in it or anything like that. Someday, though, in the indeterminate future, I will know how to do this stuff, and I will mashup my own web applications that will do exactly what I want to do, because I already know what I want them to do, I just can't make it happen. Until then, I'll just sit over here and whine. And be glad that my coworkers all think I have mad computer skillz because I can set up their printer drivers and make their Excel spreadsheets look pretty.

(Dislaimer - I have not tried Typepad because it isn't free, and I'm not sure I'm committed enough yet to pay for blogging...I do pay for my lj account, but that's more for community-based features and perks than the platform itself. It's the user icons, man. They're addicting. Anyway. If anyone has used Typepad, I'd be interested to know if it's worthwhile...I may try their free trial sometime when I have a bunch of time to play with it.)

Tags:

• technology