Look and feel is the easiest to tweak, just reskin the engine. The functionality is the hard part, because conceptually a blog is really simple (add/edit post, add comment), but if you just have that it's really unworkable. You need pingback, trackback, and spam filtering. You need to deal with taxonomy (categories or tags, your choice). You have to deal with generating XML feeds. Search is required, as are various listing styles. Perhaps you want a post calendar in your sidebar. The list goes on and on.
My recommendation would be to grab WordPress and host it yourself. You can get PHP/MySQL hosting for like $5 a month, maybe even less, and that'll give you full control on your own domain. You get a widely used platform with all kinds of plugins and themes already available, and the ability to custom create more if you need them. Yes, it's PHP, but the platform is worth the language pain. If you want CFML, grab BlogCFC or MangoBlog and you can reskin the top. I've not done that myself, so I have no idea what that would entail (i.e. whether there are clean theme plugin points), but it shouldn't be too hard to synthesize. I know Sean Corfield wrote a Fusebox frontend for BlogCFC, so it's at least possible. cheers, barneyb On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 12:45 PM, Rick Faircloth <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, Barney... > > I knew that would be the first response I'd get. > > I'm just (at this point) creating a blogging site for myself. > I've very picky about the look of the site and I've been > disappointed by what I've found. The blogging sites typically > have plenty of functionality, but are lacking in design choices. > And the designs I'm interested usually aren't very finely tuned...things > don't line up well, widgets are poorly designed, etc. > > Wordpress would be good if I wanted to run their software, but if I just > wanted to use a blog on Wordpress.org, I'd have to pay $15 per year to > tweak the CSS, $30 per year for no ads on the site, and another $15 per year > to map my own domain. $60 per year...no thanks. > > Not too impressed by Blogspot, or Blogger, or any of the others I've seen. > Functionality is fine, but the blogs just don't look very good. > > I've looked at BlogCFC and there are no good out-of-the-box styles or themes, > and working on the code the way Ray has coded it seems to be too much of a > chore. > Too much I'm not familiar with. > > I just figured I'd just write some basic webware to start, then add > functionality > to it as I went along. I've downloaded BlogCFC and recreated the database in > MySQL. > > Unless I want to go crazy with functionality, it doesn't seem like it would be > much of a chore...forms to enter blogs, comments, categories, tags, etc. > > I was just wondering if there was anyone who was thinking about doing the same > or was already underway. > > > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Barney Boisvert [mailto:[email protected]] >> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 3:06 PM >> To: cf-talk >> Subject: Re: Anybody out there comtemplating or currently building their own >> blog? >> >> Just my opinion, but unless you have a crazy-specialized use case, >> writing blogging software is the wrong choice. There are so many >> choices out there, and many (most?) are open source so they can be >> customized. Almost no reason to start from scratch. >> >> cheers, >> barneyb >> >> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Rick Faircloth >> <[email protected]> wrote: >> > ??? >> > >> > Rick >> > > > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;207172674;29440083;f Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:317553 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.4
