I’m ticked off! There is a group calling itself BOS (Bellingham Opensource Developers) who want to develop a blogging application. Now that’s not what pissed me off :p They talk about several blogging utilities like GreyMatter and say that they are OK but that *they* could do better and then they point to my site and say that it’s an “inept attempt” (at a web logging program I assume). Now if they were talking about my blog, I would probably agree with them <g> since this is probably not a very good blog but to call my app inept when they have no app of their own (for all I could see, they have no other projects of their own either) makes me see red! Ok, well maybe I’m not that steamed up :p But it does irritate me when somebody runs something down and says “Oh it’s no big deal” or “It’s crap!” but don’t have anything better to show themselves. I hope they put their code where their mouth is and do a better blogging tool but till then, they should just shut up :p
OK, now that I’ve got that out of my system <g>, BlogMan is coming along great 🙂 In fact, I hope to be able to release the first beta some time this week! I have coded most of the metablog API so that it can handle both the simple Blogger API and the more complex metablog API. I still need to add the Movable Type extensions though some of that is already there. I basically hope to have one big API which will allow for the inconsistencies/variances from the standard for each new blogging tool that I add. At the moment I only have Blogger and MT since those are the two that I can directly test. If you have any other blogging tool that you want added/tested you can: a) send me a link to their API documentation b) set up a separate account for me so that I can test stuff :p Actually it should be both of the above or at least (a) and then volunteer to beta test 🙂
As far as actual work goes, I added post synchronization and it seems to work though not completely tested. BlogMan will retrieve any number of posts from the server and then update your local copy only if the date and time of the post are different – hmm .. I just realized that that won’t do since the post date and time are set at the time of entry and not changed afterwards :p I’ll have to compare text to see if it is different. Oh well, I can fix that today! I’ve also added post publishing and successfully published an edited post from my desktop! All that needs to be done is to add remote saving of posts (not publishing – just saving to server) and remote deletion of entries. Then I should be ready for the first beta release.
Oh yes, there is one other piece that needs to be done – or rather, redone. I had set things up so that you can display all the authors for the posts. Of course, to do so, you need to retrieve information about all users from the server. Since the API does not allow you to get user information en masse (you need to provide login/password info to retrieve user info) I added a system where you can provide the login and password and update a user record. However, I had set things up in such a way where under a given server, you can have multiple blogs and under each blog, you’d have multiple users. I realized yesterday that this wasn’t accurate. The multiple users actually should be under the server since (as far as I know from the limited knowledge I have about other blogging tools) there is only one set of users – they are just assigned permissions as to which blog they can post to and which they can’t. So I have to change some of the stuff to work in this new framework. But we are getting there …
ummmmm k…… where’s their attempt at a blog tool? give me the link i’ll see if it is user friendly. IMHO MT isn’t even user friendly……… Only BLOG and GM are. sorry baby, your attempts rock.
it’s like develop you own app then start talking shit, dont’ talk shit before you develop, get it, k then?
I don’t see how Blog can be called inept. Superb, definitely, but inept…….no, sorry, I just don’t see that description working at all 🙂
I would like to see the preview hook into IE and/or mozilla and/or Scope (which might be easier) so that stylesheets, etc. are rendered. For that matter, being able to associate a stylesheet with a journal for previews, etc. would be a neat trick to pull off. At the moment, previews (for me at least) just render black text on a white background 🙂
Phil
I sent them email 🙂
——
Sir,
You appear to have missed several major selling points of Blog in your unfavourable review at http://bosdev.org/blog.html
The ability to contact the author directly.
An author that actively participates in the Blog community.
A small, stand alone application.
Built in ftp and listserve.
Everything is contained and runs on the user’s machine.
Posts can be made from any email client, including cell phones.
Built in comments without server-side scripting.
With Blog, you install the application on your machine, set the variables and start making entries. All you need is ftp access to your server, and Blog has built-in ftp capability.
Look at the installation requirements of your three “not impresssive” applications;
Moveable Type:
An account on a webserver that allows you to run custom CGI scripts.
Perl, version 5.004_04 or greater, installed on this webserver.
An FTP program to upload the necessary files to your webserver.
Javascript and cookies enabled in your browser.
Support for the DB_File Perl module OR MySQL & DBD::mysql
http://www.movabletype.org/requirements.shtml
Greymatter:
Requires Perl and CGI access.
Must CHMOD the Greymatter files after upload via FTP client
http://noahgrey.com/greysoft/installation.shtml
Blosxom:
A standard Perl installation close at hand.
The ability to run a CGI script under a Web server.
http://www.raelity.org/apps/blosxom/install.shtml
In summery, Blog is a contender in the light-weight category.
It is feature rich without bloat or unnecessary server requirements.
Sincerely,
Edward McCain
Fahim, would you mind submitting Blog here — http://www.nonags.com/softwform/submit.html — or give me permission to do so for you?
Oh. I should have mentioned, that link is to — http://www.nonags.com — a wonderful place where I get most of my applications. Sorry for using up all your bandwidth today. Having someone bash one of my favourite applications is not a good way to start my first caffeine-free morning… 😛
Edward prefers to be nice, I prefer to point out blatant errors.
“And here is an inept attempt (called The Developer’s Corner):” an inept attempt at what? The first group they list contains various blogs and the second contains various blog applications which, according to BOS (btw BOS and POS are far too similar) are “not impressive.” So, is The Developer’s Corner an inept attempt at creating a decent blog or an inept attempt at creating a blog app? If the former, only a puerile mind would ever attempt to express such an opinion as a statement of fact. If the latter, then the writer is not even worth worrying about nor is any application written by BOS likely to be worth installing. The application is called Blog, not The Developer’s Corner, which would show an obsvious lack of serious research on the part of the writer and tends to indicate that the same amount of effort that went into researching Blog would also go into developing a competing app – in short, none. Further, an application’s functionality can be easily critiqued as Edward has done. Nowhere does this individual give a substantial review of the sites nor of the applications. The whole thing stinks of a febrile attempt at maintaining a facade.
I could continue by pointing out other obvious inconsistencies with the site in general but will, instead, leave that as an exercise for the designer. Besides, I don’t want this to appear to be anything more than a vituperative attack on BOS’s clumsy attempt to disparage The Developer’s Corner or Blog, which ever their intended target truly was.
You can relax Fahim, the offending remark has now been removed from the BOS site.
Blog rules, and we all know it… I searched for many a day before I found what I wanted, needed and more. Thanks Fahim
As a non-programmer, I admit it was a challenge for me to get Blog up and running and doing what I want. Getting the email comments working was another challenge. But this is an awesome app! There is no way I could have gotten any of those server-side solutions working when I don’t know squat about any of the server-side scripting languages. Besides which, I have an awesome cheap deal on bandwidth on a server that doesn’t provide scripting.
Could Blog have more features, be easier to use, etc? Sure! But it’s a sweet package now that gets the job done — hardly an inept attempt. Phoo on the critics.