Bengfort.com

Well, things are progressing, though not as I had expected (or planned that they would). Thanks to some procrastination and holiday laziness (especially because of the trip coming up on Sunday) I have not been able to force myself to do the necessary book work to follow the course I laid out in the last post for the page.

I have, however, managed to get a decent www.bengfort.com album page up and running- but it is not as functional as I had hoped or would like. So everyone, refresh your browsers and go to the album page and check it out!

I am using freeware called iWebAlbum (iWA for short from now on) to create albums with JavaScript and HTML. It is very similar to Chris’ web album template. What this means is that I have an easy way to create albums and post them online (although uploading all that data is a pain in the butt!) and share them with you- including a slideshow function that switches the picture off every 5 seconds!

However, I will be the only one who can post photos online- you guys cannot upload pictures and create your own photo albums, which is what I am hoping for in the future. So for the time being, only my and Jaci’s albums will be put online.

How do we get around this? Well, you would have to email me your photos, or ftp them to my ftp site, then I would have to take them down to put up an album. Which kind of stinks, but if we do have a lot of pictures, this is an easy way to share them without sending around huge files- folks can choose which pictures to download. But it does limit what albums you can put online.

In the time being, though, I wanted a picture album site online, especially because of the aforementioned trip- this is an easy way to share (at least) my pictures with you all.

What I need from you all now is to tell me what pictures should be posted and when. For instance, I can post Bethany 16th Birthday pictures without too much trouble, or wedding photos. Should anything be a priority, etc.? Frankly, I don’t know how much space I have to put up numerous pictures, so that will be another thing to work out.

At least for now, though, we have one less under construction page on the website! I promise I will have more interactive php sites up in the future, but maybe not for a couple more months!

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?

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”.

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!