Bengfort.com

So, the blog work has been slacking recently, and I list my reasons below:

1. The new year- and with it a trip to China. Of course, I did get the picture album up, but keep in mind that I had a working album function before the trip to China, so all that was involved was posting pictures. I gladly did that quickly so the rest of the family would have pictures.

2. Acceptance into Oxford- many things have been happening including an acceptance into Oxford and applying for it! In October I will matriculate as a Theology student, which is so exciting. This leads to two delays:

3. Finding a job- because I have to pay for Oxford

4. Reading up on Theology- because I wasn’t a theology undergrad…

5. Rejection from so many jobs has led me into a job search depression, which hasn’t made me very willing to work on the blog, which is unfortunate.

I can’t promise a lot more work in the near future thanks to all the things listed above, but I am continuing to try to develop, so please send suggestions my way. I think we have something good running right now for the time being.

Finally- I don’t have access to the server to work with MySQL or PHP or Apache, so this is what we have to work with right now. If I can get that, then things will move along much faster. But it is hard to get that from England, when your emails don’t get returned!

Winston has a new blog going, with joint writing from the folks that know him best. Enjoy!

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!

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!

Moveable Type is the first of the five “pre-packaged” blogging solutions that I am going to review (see “Bengfort Blog Engine vs. Pre-packaged Solutions). In the near future, also reviewed will be ExpressionEngine, WordPress, TextPattern, and Blogger; as well as my findings to whether or not to create my own blog engine or to use one of these outside solutions.

Moveable Type was started in September 2001 (yes, infamous) as a personal blog solution for Ben and Mena Trott. They originally built the Pearl-based engine for friends and colleagues, but it quickly grew and was released to the public with great popularity. Six Apart was formed as a company to build Moveable Type and other blogging tools- TypePad and LiveJournal.

Moveable Type is built around Pearl- which was very popular at the time because its architechture allows Pearl developers to write their own plug-ins that can check spelling or turn the blog into a shopping site. And this, I think, is the main disadvantage for me, personally. While I do have some expierence using PHP (the now popular programming language that replaced Pearl) I don’t have any Pearl expertise or any desire to learn it really.

However, For those of you who do have some familiarity with Pearl, and no desire to design your own engine, I would recommned Moveable Type to you becasue it has a large community of users, and therefore a wide base of support for you and your design issues. It is very flexible and a stable platform for you to launch a personal site- if you are the only one who is blogging.

My second reaction is that Moveable Type costs money: about $69.95 for 5 Authors and Unlimed weblogs. Or $99.95 for Unlimited Authors, and Unlimited Weblogs. You can also download an unsupported version for free that limits you to one author and three blogs. This means that it is not good for our website because I have at least 6 potential authors, and numerous blogs if I create community family blogs- and also I don’t have $99.95 to spend on a program that I hardly know or might not be able to fit into the scheme of my website (and server since I don’t have direct access to that either).

The nice thing about Movable Type and I think also ExpressionEngine, WordPress, and TextPattern is that they are applications you download and install on your sever, much like the blog engine that I would design and install using PHP. This means that creative control of the website would be completely in my hands- and all traffic on my website would be in and out of www.bengfort.com. Blogger is an external FTP site- basically users go to www.blogger.com when they want to create a post, change their templates, or adjust their profile. Then they publish their page which sets up an FTP transfer of an .htm document to www.bengfort.com. Readers will be on www.bengfort.com until they decide they want to add a comment, they will then be takin to blogger, where they will type their comment and publish- and it is sort of hit or miss when it shows up on www.bengfort.com (unless the author publishes fairly shortly afterwards). I would like something more inhouse for our blog.

Needless to say- I apprecaited Moveable Type as an interesting platform with lots of help, but it doesn’t fit my criteria for installing it as the engine for www.bengfort.com

For More information See: MoveableType

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”.

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.

Well, it appears that we have hit our first road bumps with using the blogger function: specifically, it may be blocked in China, and that is not a good sign. Devi spent a few days trying to get her blog up and running, but with no success because she was not allowed to log into the website. We will continue to try to get her up to speed, but it may be a while before her blog starts publishing.

Luckily Jaci and Bethany seem to be up and running, each with their own unique style of blog! My first question was if it felt like we were leaving bengfort.com to go to these blogs, and I think the answer is yes! Except for the fact that the web address still says www.bengfort.com and hopefully still has the little favicon at the top; the blogs look completely different, and I have no good way of putting navigation onto the blogs except links back to the main page or the blog pages in the little section of the Blog that says “Links”. Is this acceptable?

Next is caching- which is kicking my butt. I know mom may have missed the Birthday banner that I put up on the website because she had an old homepage cached in her browser, she didn’t hit refresh, and therefore the old website loaded without the new content. When my visitors can’t see the new content, they don’t get the most from the site, and miss things like Birthday banners or Christmas wish list links, etc. And back to the blogging: they may miss comments put on the page, or not have their comments post quickly. We need a way to fix this, but I am not sure how yet (feel free to add a comment letting me know how, if you can!)

Finally, I have no way to track who is visiting the blogs, unless folks are using comments, which they are not, which means I have no idea if people are reading about what is going on, which is not a good sign, and frankly I am scared that they are not, which is a bummer.

So with these thoughts in mind, I am going to troubleshoot, please send suggestions my way!

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!