Who is tinkering (again)?

April 8, 2008

Who is tinkering (again)?

I once claimed that I didn’t want to use Gentoo Linux because you had to spend so much time tinkering with it. So naturally, I decided to tinker with my blog (yes… again). It isn’t so much that I had to. I just wanted to use the machine that’s running it currently for something else. I looked around at my options:

• Self-Hosting using Linux and some software. Isn’t this where I came in?
• Blogger so I don’t have to mess with the hosting system. Not enough features!
• Type Pad hosted from Six Apart… maybe
• WordPress hosted from, well… WordPress!

It didn’t hurt that WordPress came out with a new version. Of course, the good folks at Six Apart tried to piggy back on the wave of upgrades saying that, as long as you’re going to upgrade, you might as well move to Type Pad! OK. WordPress it is.

The old system was specifically built to help me play with Java. I ran a java based web server called Resin from Caucho. It’s Open Source and very fast. To go along with that I used Blojsom blogging software. That software hasn’t changed much in the past year it’s been up. No tinkering to be had there! So I reckon it’s served it’s purpose. Time to move on!

Right now we’re getting ready for the Georgia Baha’i Summer School. I’m doing part of the “marketing” trying to create a buzz using cartoons, emails and twitters. And *that’s* what I need the other machine for.

The fun part of this tinker was realizing that I’ve moved machines three times, blogging software four times (Blosxom, Blojsom v2, Blojsom v3, WordPress), installed (and deleted) three sets of databases (MySQL, Postgresql, H2) to hold the blog data and learned how to install and configure at least six different web servers (TJWebServer, Resin, MortBay’s Jetty, Lighttp, Aprelium Abyss and TinyHttp).

Just to keep some level of continuity though, I’ve brought forward all my posts so far. It’s been a trick to go from the Blojsom’s Postgresql implementation and map an XML file over to WordPress’ import format. I don’t want to do that again any time soon! Or do I???

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