With what I want to do with the blog, a standard community-style blog platform really didn’t fit. I’ve migrated to a jekyll based system using a slightly modified version of Midnight included with Github Pages. As part of the process, I’ve migrated a few of my previous posts that I wanted to maintain. The whole system is now much easier to maintain and much more pleasant to work with.
I’m not going to cover the process to get everything set up except that it took less than a day to get everything set up. Some handy references:
As part of the new blog, I am going to be writing a new post at least every other week. I’m full of hot air and have plenty to talk about, so finding topics isn’t the difficult part. Frequently when I have something to write about, it doesn’t necessarily fall into what a category specific blog would cover. The new focus is on anything I find particularly interesting and then providing the tools and layout necessary for readers to get the content they would like to see. This is conducive to the topics I generally feel compelled to write about.
I dislike the idea of comments on blog posts. They are either a discussion with only the content creator or are simple commentary on the post. I would much rather see an actual discussion around the post be possible, with everyone participating being a part of the discussion. Relevant points and corrections can then be included with the post.
To facilitate this, I plan on having all discussion occur in a subreddit. While some folks will need to create accounts to participate, the ability to see all of my posts, the ability to vote posts up and down (giving me objective feedback on the content individuals like to read as well as how others felt about the content) and the ability to easily hold actual discussions around the content outweigh the negative aspects of “yet another system” for folks to sign up for.
I haven’t completed the integration yet, but I plan on finishing it up some time this week. I also plan on having a detailed post of how I get it set up as I believe the format would be beneficial to others who want to have the same sort of discussion around their posts.