Homemade Blog

I've always been interested in the style of blogs. Generally speaking they're created by talented designers and clever programmers, and all the user has to do is install a pre-built template and start throwing words in. This means the Internet is filling up with nice-looking websites, and all those horrible, garish, hard-to-read websites with bits flashing everywhere and terrible midi music blaring out unexpectedly are starting to fade away.

At least that's how it seems to me. I think it's because professional blogs are better placed in search engines, so those are the ones I keep happening across these days. So hurrah for blogs in that respect.

I've ummed and ahhed for a long time about having my own blog. The big question I ask myself is: Why? Who's gonna read it? Who's gonna care? And what do I have to say anyway? (That's actually four questions, but they say the same thing.)

Frankly I don't really see the point in having a blog myself, and I'm not sure if I'll have time to post to it regularly anyway. On the other hand, maybe I'll grow to like it. And I can use it as a journal for my writing, to keep track of progress on my oh-so-slow-developing novel, Island of Fog.

But, because I like absolute, complete control of my website, and insist on building everything myself just so I know how, I haven't gone with one of the standard blog installation kits. No, I've done my own version. Creating a small admin is easy, and posting notes to my site is a doddle, but I've also done something I've never done before, which is to create RSS feeds from my posts. That's easy too, as it turns out; once I figured out which bits of code are required in the XML feed files, it was a simple case of writing a bit of PHP that dumps my posts to a carefully constructed template file -- all with the push of a button. So that's where I am today, testing out my new homemade blog and feed.

I'm sure there'll be wrinkles to iron out, but hopefully this blog will help me focus on my writing as well as stay "in the loop" with fellow writers.

Thanks, Derek, for giving me a little push!