@deivudesu@mastodon.social recently wondered aloud about blogging software.
If you were to design a brand new blogging platform from scratch today, what would it look like?
Since I recently wrote Oddmu, I have opinions, of course. It would look like this site! 😅
Would it stick to the standard "N columns" template format?
Over the years of using Oddmuse (the predecessor software I started maintaining in 2003), I tried sidebars for my site and never liked it for long. When I visit other sites, I almost never use the sidebars.
Blogroll? No. Just discuss blog posts and link to other people – that’s the better option.
Archives? No. The calendar widgets are small and cramped and soon enough I end up on a separate page where I can navigate in big chunks. I almost never want to know what somebody posted on a particular day. I want to know whether they post a lot; whether they posted more on a topic in the past. It all involves better overview and search. This need is not met by an archive in the sidebar.
Many links to entry points? No. Just put them on the first page.
Many admin links? No. Just put them on a separate page, if you must. Also try to redesign the application so that it needs fewer admin links.
Would it have a dedicated Admin UI, or would it reuse existing tools?
Oddmu has no dedicated administration user-interface. It uses Markdown text files and media files for storage. If you really need direct access, open a file browser, a shell, an editor.
Would it define its own DB schema, or piggyback off existing standards?
Since Oddmu is designed to work with files directly, the DB schema would be trivial: page name and page content. It steered me away from keeping a lot of metadata.
If I wanted to keep drafts somewhere, I guess I would set up a second Oddmu accessible only to me. Or I’d just use a text editor to write the posts. (This post started in a text editor.)
Post scheduling would have to interface with command line tools like at to move a file from one folder to another at some point in the future. I don’t need this and so I never thought about it.
Would it make sense to design it as an ActivityPub client with a Web UI?
I don’t think so. Many people commenting on fedi might be surprised to see their comments show up on the web and vice versa.
Conversely, having a little script off of a cron job that reads the blog’s feed and posts on fedi worked well for me. Of course that would not work for a platform like Blogger or Wordpress, but on an individual level, it works.
#Blogs #Wiki #Oddµ #Social Media
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