5 Reasons A Custom Blog Script Is Better
Well it seems there is another contest being run by problogger and he’s asking for a Top 5 list of anything that might relate to what our blog is about. In my case I have not really found my niche but I am trying to point it more towards web development and even custom blog scripting. Thanks to Rod for telling me about this contest.
As many of you know this blog is a custom blog. It is not run on WordPress or Blogger or any of those other 3rd party scripts, it has all been written by me and I continue to write and modify it because it is what I like to do. Some of the items here are also modified WordPress plug-ins such as the MyAvatar, and then the Technorati rank tool but I have tweaked them so that they work for this blog and I don’t take credit for them.
So why do I believe that a custom blog script is better than a 3rd party script?
Reason 5: People find it interesting that I created it myself
Reason 4: I can have various aspects of the script do what I want, when I want
Reason 3: I can work on my programming skills and techniques and use it towards my portfolio
Reason 2: It helps better my knowledge about blogging such as SEO, Networking etc
Reason 1: There will not be another blog out there that looks like this one!
Now I know that writing a custom blog isn’t for everyone because it is fairly involved. I am constantly tweaking, changing, modifying, adding to the script on a daily basis whereas someone with WordPress would just download what other people have done and just worry about their posts.
For those who have knowledge in PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS might want to look at doing their own custom blog script one day. It is a fun experience and I am still glad that I choose to create my own. I have also had a few people ask me for my script(s) but it currently isn’t ready for public consumption since there are some manual aspects I still deal with.
What has a custom blog script done for me?
Reflecting on what my blog script has taught me goes in line with my above Top 5 Reasons Why A Custom Blog Is Better has allowed me to reach a PageRank of 5. Sure to some people it might not mean a lot but to me I find it to be a decent accomplishment since I had a PR of 0 when I transferred to this domain name.
I have a better understanding on what blogging is all about and I enjoy doing it. I just need to find that troublesome niche so that my posts are not all over the place and hopefully that will help increase my traffic.
Now I am not saying that because the majority of people run Wordpress or Blogger that they don’t know what blogging is all about, I know there are hundreds if not thousands that know a lot more than me (I’ve only made $13 in Adsense since my first day blogging and that was like 9 months ago). All I am saying is that I personally have a better understand from doing a custom script on how blogs works. More of the mechanics and a bit more of the fundamentals that I would if I went with something like WordPress.
May 7th, 2007 at 11:30:46
See people owe you more respect for custom writing your own software, if more people would take this approach they would learn alot more.
speaking of which - time for me to start writing my new blog in Ruby
May 7th, 2007 at 12:03:47
Hey I agree with you that a custom blog is better than a third party script. I’m trying to create my own script too. It’s going to take a year or so to get it anywhere near yours but I’m trying. You could add another item to your top 5 (3b) IT IS MINE I BUILT IT!
Brennan the Vyper
May 7th, 2007 at 12:49:15
Thanks for the comments!
Nick: I haven’t looked much into Ruby how good is it? I’ve just heard mixed feelings.
Brennan: It is a good learning experience. I tend to learn better if I have a purpose to do so.
May 7th, 2007 at 13:05:19
Happy to see you’re using a modified version of our plugin
Have you made any improvement/modification?
May 7th, 2007 at 14:37:18
Oh the MyAvatar one, no I haven’t done any improvements I pretty much just used the part where it retrieves the avatar from MyBlogLog and displays it. I had some issues with it earlier where it wasn’t displaying the image properly because of the person’s URL for their website was different from their account, but I seemed to of gotten around that. I love it though it’s an awesome plugin. I hope you don’t mind, and of course I do not take credit for it.
May 7th, 2007 at 15:24:38
Great job Tyler! And you can feel free to promote your Technorati Rank changes… in fact, perhaps we can co-promote. Especially if yours works in PHP4. I’ve got some ideas on a variable layout for one and will be working on it in a couple weeks.
May 7th, 2007 at 18:21:16
Tyler, Ruby on Rails is pretty fast with a decent server - I haven’t really had any complaints with it so far and I’ve been toying with it for about 6 months.
I’ll have a test setup on my server hopefully this weekend and I’ll let you know and share the code so you can check it out!
Maybe we can run some tests on php vs ruby?
-N
May 8th, 2007 at 02:58:42
For me, custom script is fine as long no 3rd party script for doing the job. If it exist why reinvent the wheel
May 8th, 2007 at 06:45:49
hi tyler,
that’s a good no-nonsense post you have here. good info as well. if you have time, maybe you can check my post for the problogger project as well, it’s about how to be darren rowse!
http://robinsongo.com/2007/05/08/top-5-tips-to-be-the-next-darren-rowse/
good luck to us.
May 8th, 2007 at 09:05:06
alamster: People have asked me that before but for me it’s more about the experience and the learning. It allows me to work on my programming skills and technique and gives me something to do. Sometimes I do think how it would of been easier to go with something like WordPress, but overall I have enjoyed making my own little creation.
Robinson go: Thanks for the invite, I will be checking it out momentarily!
May 8th, 2007 at 09:18:49
Hey Tyler! I found your article through the ProBlogger Group Writing Project, and I thought it was very interesting to see a take on this that strays away from the traditional “WordPress rules” perspective. I’m participating as well with an entry over at Bloggst, and I linked to your article, as I thought it would be interesting for many of our readers and members to see a different perspective towards this.
May 8th, 2007 at 09:48:38
Hi Tyler:
Your post is interesting for me as I tend to want to know as much about what I am doing as possible, so I like your approach. I am new to the Internet and to Blogging [I started in January this year]. I have a spot at Blogger and I also have a domain, which I prefer, but I have no knowledge how to set up a blog starting from scratch, which is what you appear to have done. Can you direct me to any literature for guidance?
PS. Good luck with the ProBlogger showdown.
Thanks
May 8th, 2007 at 13:15:44
Lars-Christian - Thanks for the link. I haven’t seen many custom made blogs but I have seen a lot of custom made templates for WordPress. Perhaps I’ll find a custom made blog out there! Know of any others?
stewjean - If you have a domain I would suggest getting some web hosting service (such as bluefur.com) and run a copy of WordPress on it to get you started. WordPress sets up in 5 minutes or less and is relatively easy to use. If you are interested in setting up a blog from scratch it isn’t for the faint of heart. You would need to have knowledge of HTML, CSS, PHP and MySQL and then mush them all together to work with each other. If you’re interested in learning PHP I would suggest to sources: http://www.phpfreaks.com and http://www.php.net as for blogging there are hundreds of great blogs out there that offer advice on how to start up a blog. Perhaps I look into some of them and post a list.
Thanks for commenting!
May 8th, 2007 at 17:00:28
Great top 5. I just had mine done by a pro over at realmuscleonline.com and things have improved lots.
Thanks for dropping the comment at my blog.
RT
May 9th, 2007 at 09:40:11
This is a beautiful site, so it is no wonder to me that you got a PR5. All that work coding takes a ton of effort…great job.
May 9th, 2007 at 10:41:32
Thanks for the comments Jennifer! It’s nice to hear that something I’ve coded looks good. Some of my past sites, were not really pleasing to the eye
May 9th, 2007 at 11:08:38
Great Job there!
I am really interested in knowing from you which could you consider better wordpress or Drupal?
I use drupal, and have never tested wordpress.
May 9th, 2007 at 11:15:12
I haven’t used Drupal, but I have played with WordPress and it seems fairly easier to navigate through, add things to, and modify. There are tons of themes and there are a lot of people that create plugins for it too. If you want to test WordPress out you can create an account and use their online service at http://www.wordpress.com, if you have space you can install the downloadable version from http://www.wordpress.org. WordPress setup takes less than 5 minutes too, customizing it is a bit different.
May 9th, 2007 at 12:41:05
Nice post, and nice site! I use WordPress on mine, but I love the idea of using your own custom script. One day when I know more about programming, I’d like to try it myself.
How long did it take you to make?
May 9th, 2007 at 13:05:53
I could possibly see a small advantage to having a customm script, ie; no one else having one just like yours, but is it really worth the time & trouble of programming a blog script with all the excellent ones out there now?
Unless you like rolling your own =)
Nice Top 5 post BTW.
Don
May 9th, 2007 at 14:04:18
LearningNerd: It’s an on going thing, though to get it to the point where I could post topics and have them displayed perhaps a day or two. But to make it look and function the way it does now? 8-9 months, but like I said, it’s an on going thing and I’m always tweaking here, adding there etc.
AffiliateWatcher: That is one thing I like about it, it is unique. It does have a feel of WordPress so when people come here they don’t have to learn to navigate something new. To me it has been worth the time and effort, I’ve really enjoyed doing it. Sometimes I do wish I started with a WordPress blog, but this custom one gives me daily challenges and that is what I like most!
Thanks for the comments!
May 10th, 2007 at 18:41:01
Great Top 5… inspirational to see that it can be done! I’ve been looking for an interesting personal project to take on, this might be an idea… Curious what your core platform/language/libraries are?
Stop by and check out my Top 5 post…
May 10th, 2007 at 19:45:50
Well if you want to know what the server runs it’s Ubuntu server version 6. The scripts I do are PHP based with a MySQL Database for storing the information. Mix in HTML and a bit of CSS! No libraries have been used in the making of this blog either
Thanks for visiting!
May 11th, 2007 at 06:14:42
Hmmm… Other than my development server running FC6 with a custom compile of PHP, I could do this! Will have to start thinking about it. Though my production host is Debian, it shoudn’t be much different.
Are you using PHP5 features? I’m a big fan (and user at work!) of it’s XML/XSL processing.
May 11th, 2007 at 07:46:53
Actually this server is running 4.3.2. So I’m not running any features of 5. I haven’t had time to update the PHP on the server but when I find time I will be doing it. The joys of having physical access to the server.
May 11th, 2007 at 14:32:31
I enjoyed your Top 5 and it inspired me to try and do a “Daily Top 5″ on my “home-grown” blog.
I developed my custom blog script using ASP and SQL Server. Now, I’m learning PHP and my latest (and biggest) project is to convert the entire web app (I call it “WEBMAN”) running my sites to PHP with a MySQL database.
Thanks for the inspiration!
May 12th, 2007 at 02:35:46
Very nice! I am the writer of “Top 5 things to do in Istanbul” This was my first group activity, but i liked it very much.
http://meeting-continents.blogspot.com/2007/05/top-5-things-to-do-in-istanbul.html
Have you ever been to Istanbul which links east to west, and west to east like a weblink. Istanbul played such a critical role in the world politics and culture throughout the history.
Now i have a dream i would like to share with you and Darren Rowse. All the Probloggers should meet at Istanbul and join the 29th edition of the Eurasia Marathon on Sunday 28th of October, 2007.
Let’s meet where the continents meet : As the Istanbul Eurasia Marathon starts from the Anatolian side while taking the runners to the most beautiful spots of town, signing its name under a touristic attraction as well. The Bosphorus is one of the most beautiful spots on the world and as you run through it, history of the centuries run with you on the streets.
I joined the 28th Intercontinental Istanbul EurAsia Marathon on 5th of November, 2006 together with my friends, Joe and Suat San. We enjoyed the wonderful Bosphorus, and beautiful streets of Istanbul on a cold but sunny Sunday morning. The slogan for last year’s marathon was “let’s run for a non-smoking world”.
this was my blog post for last year’s marathon:
http://meeting-continents.blogspot.com/2006/12/intercontinental-eurasia-marathon.html
I would be happy to invite you to the 29th Intercontinental Istanbul Eurasia Marathon, the only marathon to run between two continents - Europe and Asia. Istanbul is one of the oldest settlements on the world. What about participating in the 29th EurAsia Marathon in 2007 which takes place in the most beautiful places of a wonderful city that has been the capital of three empires ?
You may find details about the marathon here:
http://www.istanbulmarathon.org/english/main.asp
Please let me know if you are interested.
Have a nice day!
Mert
May 12th, 2007 at 09:28:37
Taurus: I am glad I could inspire you! I never did go with ASP because of it being associated to MS but that’s just me. Good luck with converting to PHP it is a fun language.
Mert: I read you’re top 5 and they are definitely good reasons to visit Istanbul among others of course. Unfortunately as much fun as it could and probably will be I won’t be able to attend but thanks for the invitation!
Thanks for comments!
May 18th, 2007 at 07:07:24
I started out as a MS programmer over 10 years ago and rode the MS wave. Never a problem for me to find work anywhere in the country. Since then, the culture has changed tremendously to one of independence. Now open source is the wave to ride and PHP/MySQL is the leader for Independent Contractors.
I built my custom blog script and WEBMAN application with a level of independence in mind. My adoption of the whole DIY mentality stems from that.
Learning PHP/MySQL by converting my WEBMAN app from ASP is my way of continuing to get in-depth experience and knowledge by doing. By far, that is the biggest reason why a custom blog script is better.