Bengfort.com

5 Posts Fiver Authors!

Well we did it! Today, January 12, 2010 we got a 5 for Fiver- 5 posts from the Five authors of Bengfort.com! As you can see, we cracked the Moet and cheers to you guys! New Years Resolutions resolved! One big problem, about this though, is that the five posts are kind of buried beneath the last one (and now this one). Until I can get the separate authors page, I thought I would put the links here up front so everyone could read them:

5 Posts/ 5 Authors/ 1 Day:

Book Review- World on Fire by Bethany Bengfort

Big, Intimidating, Necessary? by Devi Bengfort

… And Doubly in the Bubbly by Jacquelyn Bengfort

Boredom by Winston Bengfort

Quick Note from Ben by Benjamin Bengfort

Please read and enjoy! Nice work everyone!

Well I haven’t been blogging because I have nothing interesting to say! I’ve literally been doing nothing besides watching movies on my brand new laptop, exercising, getting massages and going out with friends for the past 10 days, which as nice as that is, is kind of getting a little mundane. I thought I started teaching this week, and on Wednesday, the date I was initially told would be my first day of class, I sat around all morning waiting for a call, and when none came I finally called my contact teacher and in a rather absent minded way she said I don’t start work until next week! Well that is certainly nice, but had I known I had an extra week of time I would have been traveling, with my boyfriend in Beijing, or doing something productive with my time. That is the only bummer about Chinese people never telling you things in advance. Anyway, at least I’ve had time to watch a lot of good movies, but I’m getting kind of antsy.

Hello All,

Just a note to say that I have updated the girls’ webpages with new links so that you can link directly to their blogs without going back through the Bengfort website. Since there was so much demand, I hope this satisfies everyone’s navigation concerns.

Also, I realize that the comments page isn’t as reliable as it could be. Keep in mind if it says that it didn’t publish your comment, it may actually have- just refresh the page, or click on comments, and it should be there. No worries. Also for those of you that are writing under anonymous, it might be better just to put your name, you don’t have to put a website, just your name will do (like you have been using in the anonymous section- mom, matagi, momb, dad bengfort, whatever you like). This might help. Finally, the main blog page may not actually have the comments listed (it may say only 1 comment when in fact there are 4 or 5. That will change when the post is republished, which should happen every time a comment goes, but it takes a bit- just hit refresh, click on comments, or go to the specific entry page via the link on the side with the title of the post, you should be ok!

I have received a couple complaints about my blog: I apologize that I am not as prolific a writer as the girls, but this particular blog was just intended to address the concerns of the site, not necessarily be a daily blog like the girls’. I intend on starting one soon! Right now my tasks are below (in the order I hope to accomplish them, but who knows the timeline):

1. Get email notifications to you guys when new posts are put up (who knows if this is possible?!)

2. Update the homepage for China Trip

3. Finish writing the series I started on various Blog Engines (which means continued reading)

4. Add Album pages to the website including Paris Album, and Christmas Albums, (soon it will also include a China Album!)

5. Get a recipe post php script online so we can submit and add recipes

6. Remove the site from Blogger to allow a Bengfort.com only engine.

It will be work, but stay tuned as the site continues to be updated!

I have become a nerd- thank God!

Today I have officially (according to my wife and my sudden urge to watch re-runs of TNG) become a nerd, and not a moment too soon! (The picture below should explain all, note the CenGen shirt…)

Today I turned my Naval Academy computer that is five years old, suffering from all the various components (and video games) I have installed on it, into a local web server with Apache 2.0, php 5.1, and MySQL so I can have a testing environment to build the Bengfort Blog Engine.

Frankly, I am not sure it will survive the installation.

So far, I have desperately run to Staples to get an external USB hard drive to back up my computer in the face of ever impending blue screen doom. (Somehow, magically the computer came back to life… I don’t know what happened, but to this day the Computer sometimes will not turn off without physically unplugging it from the wall!) I can’t run multiple applications of anything more complicated than iTunes or Internet Explorer. And every time I turn the computer off, I do so terrified that it won’t turn on again (especially since my computer basically rejected the external hard drive!)

Well that is that, and even though my poor 90 GB Hard Drive is almost maxed out (remember when: “90 Giga-whats? Gosh, I won’t even use 90 of those mega-thingys, why do they give us so much space?”) I have still boldly gone into programming territory.

Today I have moved from simple web designer to web programmer.

With my successful installation, I hope to achieve what so few jocks have done in the past- to actually do something useful with a computer. And if my computer survives, I intend to design and install our very own blog engine onto the website. Step one complete: one small step for 10 year olds, one giant step for ex-Navy Lacrosse players everywhere.

And as promised in the past few blogs… it begins! Now the only question remains: does my domain have php, etc. installed on the server in Baltimore?

I’m quickly becoming addicted to this blogging thing. I have to keep myself from writing more than one post a day. I hope this is not a reflection of the fact that I have no life. I’m just going to think its because I have lots of downtime between classes, or that I just enjoy wasting time when I should be studying Chinese, something I haven’t really done this week and is going to bite me in the butt tomorrow when I have class. I started reading 八十天环游地球 （Around the World in 80 Days) about two weeks ago, and still haven’t gotten past the second chapter because I’ve been an utter slacker lately. Yikes, where did my self-motivation go?

Anyway, today mom and I made a rough itinerary of vacation plans. So things are moving along in that respect. I’m really excited about seeing you all in January (albeit sans Jaci). It’s really cool that all of you can make it, we haven’t had an international family vacation since the Guyana trip. I guess its about time we had another!

The comment on the last post is a good one and the question: “Why not just use a pre-packaged solution like Wordpress?” is the central question for the next phase of www.bengfort.com evolution.

Before I start: I just want to say that I am about to review ExpressionEngine, Movable Type, TextPattern, WordPress, and Blogger and present a comparison of those pre-packaged solutions in the next post. The question for today’s post merely compares the suitability of using my own created blog engine vs. using a pre-packaged solution*.

Currently we are using a “pre-packaged solution”- blogger. As you read this post, you are reading a post that was created by blogger using the blogger engine, database, and server- that posted an html page via ftp onto www.bengfort.com into the correct folder for whoevers blog it is. When you write a comment- you leave www.bengfort.com and go to beta.blogger.com/comments- which then publishes the new html and sends it via ftp to the website. When a Bengfort.com Blogger signs into Blogger, they leave www.bengfort.com to create and publish their posts, then come back to view it. The only thing that happens on www.bengfort.com is the viewing of the blog.

There are benefits of using this method:

1. The Blog can be searched for on Blogger.com (I think)
2. Each Blog can have its own template and style that the girls wish- and they can do it without knowing HTML, because the minor things like navigation I can do myself. All they have to do is choose their template from the 26 on blogger.
3. I don’t have to do anything with RSS, run any applications on the server, or install anything into the domain for it to work- plus we get to deal with professionals, not a developing engine that I would be working on.
4. This is quick and easy, and linked to our google accounts.

However, these benefits can be annoyances, and there are some desirable aspects of having my own PHP, MySQL, Apache engine running on the server.

1. With a little work, I can index the blog on several websites including major blog search websites to expand readership. Also we would have to maintain our readership through ohter advertising of some sort. Essentailly in time I could counter the affect of the blogger search.
2. Blogger search only works in blogger.
3. Although the girls can choose their own basic template, they can’t personalize it any further. I could design and create templates for the girls that would be much more unique than the blogger website, while still maintaining the feel of the Bengfort website. It leaves all the design in my court- but in the end it would be a much more personalized solution.
4. We wouldn’t have to leave bengfort.com in order to blog
5. Easier website navigation, etc.
6. RSS applications are not necessarily what I want running with our blog. I would prefer that people go to the website and actually read it online, but if folks did use an RSS application- I could set up the site for use with it. I would also allow RSS into facebook, and other web-based applications
7. I would have full and better control over the website- and I wouldn’t be “blocked by the chinese government…”

My intitial reaction to build my own engine was when Devi couldn’t log into Blogger from China. We originally suppossed that was because the website was blocked so I decided to build my own engine that wasn’t blocked. However, Devi is now allowed onto blogger- so there is not so much a time issue, and we can take a good hard look at the pros and cons of using a pre-packaged solution vs. my own engine.

Of course, I’m leaning towards building my own: it would get me down and dirty with code I have never learned, and allow me to take full credit for my site, which would be nice. But I think an open dialogue about what is best for the site is needed. Please leave me comments with any pros, cons, concerns, applause that you can think of.

*Because we are using Blogger currently, I will probably refer to blogger as “the pre-packaged solution”.

The girls have all managed to create their blogs! That makes me happy, and they are all so diverse, which is extremely nice. Now we need to get the readership up, which will involve facebook advertising, I’m sure!

But before I know Devi was online, and in a fit of ambition, I purchased a book called Blog Design Solutions in order to build my own blog engine. I know of course, that I am writing on blogger as I say this, but I am seriously thinking about moving www.bengfort.com to its own blog engine.

What does this mean?

It means that all blogging, publishing, etc. Would take place on www.bengfort.com without the help of an outside site like Blogger. You would log into bengfort.com, write on bengfort.com and the blog engine would be maintained by yours truly. It would be very similar to what we have set up right now, except without those pesky frames at the top of the page that blogger puts up.

What would change?

Well the style of your blog would change, it would have to be something that you and I work on together to get designed, but it could be more creative, but also has the possibility of being extremely more like the main site (good or bad, I don’t know). Also I may not have as many tools up at first like blogger does (profiles, etc.) but it would be developed to that direction.

What wouldn’t change?

All that you have written so far would stay, but perhaps not the comments, I would have to look into it. Also you would still have your own log in and ability to edit your blog as usual.

Anyway, it will take me a couple weeks to design the Engine, which will include a crash course in PHP and MySQL; so we will continue using blogger for the time being. If you have any comments, concerns, or suggestions about the switchover, let me know.

Welcome to the first edition of The Bengfort Global Blog Development Discussion. Today’s issue is about blogging, which will be the primary function of the website. Today I installed Blogger beta onto the website as a test means to see if an outside provider would be most efficient in publishing the blog to our website. I set up the three girls: Devi, Bethany, and Jaci with a brand new blog using their Google Mail accounts (Blogger is a Google site) and gave them space on the webpage to publish their blogs.

Over the next few weeks the girls are going to be exploring Blogger Beta and writing posts to the website to see if it is easy to use, and self-explanatory, and if they agree that this is a good method, I will go ahead and set up new blogs for those that want them, and if there are any discussion related blogs we want to set up. The girls are essentially testing the feasibility of allowing a publishing site to publish via ftp to our site, and how that affects the dynamics of the website. My main questions are:

- Is Blogger easy to use from www.bengfort.com?

- Does Blogger beta allow you enough design flexibility, to post to our website?

- Will the ftp conditions work, with multiple people posting via ftp?

- Can we put comments on to the blog and keep a running discussion?

- Can the girls figure out intricacies of Blogger and use it as a creativity tool, rather than a model?

- Does Blogger allow us the flexibility to view web pages within the Bengfort domain? (ie can we link back and forth and navigate easily?)

- Do you feel like you are leaving bengfort.com when you use Blogger?

- And finally, should we use Blogger beta in the future?

With these questions answered, hopefully we can get closer to having a more dynamic and user interactive web page with all the bells and whistles!