I have been publishing and developing online for the past 4 years.

I would like to discuss mac development, efficient workflows, technology and revisit my favorite topic, "electronic consciousness".
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    November 7

    The Challenges of Being a Lazy Blogger

    As a (fairly) proficient website developer let me be the first to admit that I became quite lazy when it came to my decision of entering the Blogging world.  Faced with the choice of creating my own management system vs. using a premade package or website that would already do this for me was a tricky one.  While creating your own as a developer allows you to get your displayed data exactly how you want it, it can be a time consuming process, especially when you consider the need for RSS feed support, smart URLs, and so on.

    Expression Engine

    I began by trying out expression engine.  My biggest beef with EE was that it seemed like a monumental pain to re-theme your site after you have installed it.  In fact, this is my primary beef with all packages — theming being made SO difficult.  Spending hours on creating templates for the various pages of my layout is not an enticing thought to consider.  Expression Engine and similar packages (like Drupal, WordPress, etc) had to go for this reason.

    Blogger.com

    Sorry Google, I am hating your Blogger.com for the opposite reason.  You can barely theme this at all!  What fun is a blog if it’s just going to look like the thousands of others every Jack and Jill are throwing up every minute online.  If you expect any shot of achieving the creme of the crop that defies Sturgeon’s Law then you better have a fresh innovative design.

    Tumblr

    So my journey ended at Tumblr.  Here is what I think Tumblr is really doing right:

    1. The interface and workflow is seamless and beautiful.  From updating your information to theming it how you want it, every detail of Tumblr is thought out and pristine.  The API is intuitive, simple, and readily available.
    2. When you customize your design in Tumblr it gives you the entire page to work with, starting from the first HTML tag on your page, to the closing bracket.  This is complete control and I am loving it.
    3. No Advertisements.  What a huge sell, to have a hosted blog free of all advertisements and eyesores.

    But our relationship is far from perfect.  What I am really missing on Tumblr so far is the inability to search other people’s blogs.  I am also trying to figure out how I can get my post tags displayed with URL links so I can explore other Tumblr blogs that are tackling the topics I am too.  All in all it’s a fresh and welcome approach to accessible blog creation.



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