…or better, on Rails_.
Yep, this 7th (!) version of the H3RALD website is powered by the overly-popular Ruby web framework and by
the Typo blogging platform.
Nope, I decided not to re-develop my website entirely from scratch this time, although I was tempted to, for three simple reasons:
- My “coding time” is close to non-existent nowadays, and even with a framework like Rails re-developing a site from scratch would have taken at least some time, which at the moment I don't have.
- Typo is a fairly robust and feature-rich blogging platform, and after learning a little bit of Rails I could customize it to my needs straight away. URLs didn't break thanks to Rails' routing system, migration was easy enough, and developing the missing bits (like a rudimentary BBCode parser and a TextLinkAds sidebar) wasn't hard at all.
- I wanted to take a break from my site, not code it again.
Fair enough, but why the new site anyway?
Again, there's more than one answer:
- Lately I didn't feel comfortable sporting a Cake-powered website \- that makes sense, to an extent, right? Good.
- I got fed up with spam. I wanted to re-open comments but I didn't want to implement spam protection for the old site.
- To be totally honest, I got fed up with PHP itself as well, after trying out Ruby for a few days and ordering and reading the 2nd edition of the PickAxe, which I highly recommend.
…But let's say something about what's new in this new release, shall we?
- A new, black (and red) theme. Something completely different. Probably not that good, but quite useful: Every day I check my site from my laptop at work, and if it looks like a big black blob I know that I have to regulate my monitor. I showed it to my parents on their old monitor, and they realized that perhaps it's time to buy an LCD one…
- Comments, trackbacks, desktop client support, theme support, a cool admin area and everything else Typo offers.
- Full RSS feeds. With no ads. So you don't need to see this black blob anymore, if you really don't like it.
- No projects or bookmarks, just my blog and my articles. Let's keep it simple.
More to come…