A New Hope (er, Home)
You may notice a few changes here at BTN, most obviously at the end of each post, where we now have a much more full-featured control panel rather than just the “Comments” link. The explanation for this change is that I’ve finally moved off my custom-built blog system to the wonder that is Movable Type, and with that to a new web host, PHPWebHosting.com.
There were several reasons for this change, the largest being the severe unreliability of my comment provider (which, believe it or not, I was actually paying for). I’d had enough people e-mailing and posting stuff like “this is what I wanted to say, but your comment provider wouldn’t let me” that I was sick of it. I also wanted a host that offered Python scripting and POP3 mailboxes; raw logfiles and native traffic analysis are an added bonus.
I could have written my own comment facility, but in all honesty, I hate databases, and I just didn’t want to deal with it. MT allows me enough flexibility (my generated index file remains in PHP) that it satisfies my coder’s ego, but it’s definitely a polished application. No more carting around HTML templates on my keychain USB drive and having to find an FTP client to do remote updates. I can update this site now from a WWW-only Internet kiosk like any of the several I found in Montreal run by Bell Canada.
Pages other than this one will look a bit out of place for now; they’re modeled after the traditional MT template. I have that version of the site available here. The look-and-feel of this site will probably eventually become a blend of these two (I really like the MT calendar, for one).
So poke around, and let me know what you think!
15 July 2003 / 0 Comments / Tags: tech