I Need Your Help!

January 26, 2007, 10:53 AM | 8 Comments

Over the past several months I’ve been putting off re-writing the back-end of my site. As some of you may know, everything on this site I’ve built from scratch and the main purpose for doing that was to learn. The problem I’ve been experiencing lately is that I just don’t have the time to re-write my custom CMS and continue to publish content on a regular basis. There are only so many hours in the day and I just can’t do both.

Obviously, the most important thing about a site is the content - regardless of what methods are used to publish that content. My current setup has served me well over the past year and a half, but it’s starting to show some cracks and is in need of an update. In essence, the back-end of this site is still the same as what I started developing in June of 2005. Sure, it’s seen a few tweaks here and there to accommodate some of the features that I added to the site along the way, but most of those were fairly minor. Some features I haven’t gotten around to adding administrative features for and have actually been modifying the database by hand (through phpMyAdmin) to accomplish.

So, having said all that, I’m very seriously considering a major change around here. After 18 months (give or take) of “going it alone” I’m close to making the decision to move to a pre-packaged blogging platform and leave my custom CMS by the wayside to collect dust. I haven’t decided fully whether or not I’m actually going to make the switch, but I’m pretty sure that’s what I’ll end up doing… it’s just a matter of when.

Here’s where you come in

I don’t have a wealth of experience when it comes to blogging platforms, so I’d really appreciate some suggestions on which platform to use. Keep in mind that switching will probably involve a lot of data entry on my part, so if there’s one system that’s easier for that, I’d like to know. I’ve used WordPress a little bit and Textpattern even less but I’m considering both. Even though I’ve never used it (or even watched someone else use it) I’m leaning towards going with Movable Type. All the cool kids use it, so it’s gotta be good… right?

A few things that are extremely important to me:

• Quality of the code that’s output to the browser. This goes without saying really, but I can’t advocate proper markup and standards if the system I use doesn’t play well with those standards.
• Ability to customize the system. From time to time I may want to add features to my site (such as the polling feature you see on this entry). I’ll probably want to do these myself, rather than use a plug-in.
• Flexibility of the system. Some of the sections of my site may not fit the blog category… so I want something that will allow me to do more than just blog.
• The system must not contain the words “Blogger”, “Vox”, “LiveJournal” or “TypePad” anywhere in its name.

I know there are readers of this site that use at least 1 of the 3 platforms I’ve mentioned above, so please give me your suggestions if you can. Also, if there are other systems you think I should consider, I want to hear from you as well. I’d like to have a good discussion on the pros/cons of each system and hopefully come to a decision in the coming weeks.

Update: Thanks to a suggestion by Nathan Smith, I’ve also decided to add ExpressionEngine to my list of possible platforms to check out.

Posted in: Life, Reinspire