january 26, 2009
I've been using Wordpress for a long time now.
Recently, there has been a lot of talk about Wordpress (not positive either). Plus, wonko keeps on telling me how bad Wordpress is. Oh, and he comes around rubbing the Wordpress security thing in my face. I have looked for a replacement for Wordpress over the last few months, but nothing has met my expectations. The replacements are usually too big, too small, or too weird.
There were things that I wanted and could not find -- or found, but was too hard to implement. There were things in Wordpress that I hated and didn't want at all (bloat). There were also things in Wordpress that I could live without, but would be nice to have around (WYSIWYG).
After looking around and testing lots of software, I realized that I wouldn't find what I wanted -- and that I would either have to live with Wordpress (and the constant need to upgrade this beast) or I could write my own blogging tool.
I opted for the later.
Ryan Kennedy tweeted: "wordpress is the new mcdonalds, you wouldn't use/eat it if you knew what was inside..." Very true.
After writing my microblogging tool, mindof, I had something to work with. I took the mindof codebase and expanded it to become a full blogging tool. That meant adding some functionality (like comments, search, editing, etc) to flesh it out as a full blogging tool. What I came up with was dertyn.
Here is what dertyn is:
- Fast.
- Stripped down: There is nothing fancy about dertyn. It is all PHP without any AJAX or JS. I may add some JS in the future, but for now, it is all Web 1.0. (update: With the help of the YUI Library, there's some Web 2.0 goodness now).
- Complete: I can post. You can comment. I can edit. I can delete. Both of us can search. RSS feed works.
- Works: It works and I will soon be using it here.
- Permalinks: One of the big problems I had with other tools was that they could not maintain my permalinks. So, I made dertyn work for my needs. Yes, it is hardcoded, but it is not hard to change to your needs either.
- Search: This was something I had been thinking about writing for mindof, but never got around to it. I got around to it for dertyn and it works OK.
- Ready for move in: There is a barebones import script for Wordpress. Now, I can bring my old crap with me!
What dertyn is not:
- Fancy: There is nothing fancy about dertyn. No WYSIWYG editor (update: There is now! YUI Rich Text Editor is being used for this). There are no post categories (I never really use them, so I did not bother to implement them). No tagging. No pingbacks. No trackbacks. No fancy form layouts. No word-counting JS. Nothing. It is a barebones tool.
- Extendable: There is no way to write plugins for dertyn. There is no way to theme dertyn. What you see is what you get.
- Well-written: I made it work. I think the code is OK, but it probably won't win any contests.
So, anyways, I think the code is complete at this point -- as I have spent the last couple of git commits tweaking the look of dertyn instead of fixing bugs or adding features. I will move ultramookie.com from Wordpress to dertyn sometime this week -- "eat your own dogfood" right? If it runs well, I will package it up as a 1.0 release.
For now, you can get the code from github if you want to give dertyn a try. If you don't want to futz around, I have a test version running here.
If you are curious, there is no meaning to the word "dertyn". I originally named the project "durden" after the Fight Club character Tyler Durden. Then I figured that it would be hard to search for "durden" without pulling up a crapload of Fight Club references. Oh, and also the domain was taken. So, "dertyn" it was since it sounded like "durden" and the domain was available -- plus, it is really easy to find.
If Wordpress is McDonalds, then dertyn is a home-cooked meal.
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