Development Shack Technology Understood

About the Blog  

First, let me say this:

Blogging needs are just different from a Web Developers' perspective.

Knowing that, we should consider all of these things as well:

  • I want something I don't have to style for 1 hour before it "looks half decent"
  • WYSI NOT WYG (The WYSIWYG concept dies with the creator). I look at the HTML it generates and I hate it (let's be honest).
  • I want it be quick, easy, fast, and flexible.
  • I don't care about what a typical blog owner cares about (search, nice control panels, user commenting functions, contact forms).

The purpose of this blog is to be indexed by Google. The reason is simple:

I am blogging about Software Engineering solutions to issues that can't be easily found elsewhere.

I care about contributing to the Software Development Community as a whole.

If it helps, +1 the page, or tweet about it. If not, I hope you find a solution some where else.

So how does this blog work for my special/unique needs?

  • I ditched Wordpress. All too many hackers are aware of how to hack Wordpress. I've had so many DDoS attacks from China, it's not even funny.
  • I also ditched the database entirely. I don't need it.
  • I kept PHP because Linux + Apache enjoys PHP.
  • I am using the wonderful Ace editor from Cloud9. I have created an entirely web-based IDE based on this editor. It is more simplistic than their commercial offerings (and free).
  • I am using a modified version of parsedown.php. Which also means, I am using markdown.
  • I created a blog post editor to write markdown in, specify url, meta description, post date, etc. It allows me to preview the result before posting as well.

Using the Cloud9 editor, I can upload images/files, update by blog backend (which is literally a JSON file), and make any other changes to the site.

I've modified parsedown.php to include target="_blank" to every link it generates.

Using this combination of tools, I can quickly post without worrying about styling.

You can checkout the WebIDE project I created that is the basis for my web development here: https://github.com/dnewmon/webide