It looks like everything is up and running now, more or less.  I am still tweaking the theme a bit and working on some lingering browser compatibility issues.  I’m kicking myself for starting by modifying an existing theme rather than just beginning entirely from scratch, as at least a couple of issues were the result of style issues I missed when editing the original theme.  I’ve decided that I really don’t like the fact that I can’t override user defined functions in PHP as that would have made things much easier.  Now I have to compulsively look at the change lists during each update to see if I have to merge changes, which is a pain in the butt.

So obviously I have decided to roll my own blog rather than use a blogging host such as Blogger or Spaces.  I saw benefits going both routes.  With a blog host security becomes their problem rather than mine, and considering the frequent patches pushed out for all of the existing blogging software (Wordpress, Moveable Type, etc) this is a major consideration.  Hopefully I have locked things down enough that even if a zero day that grants admin functionality is released other preventative measures will still protect the admin controls (that whole defense in depth concept).  Granted that will be little condolence when some new XSS is found in the blogging software and a billion comment spam bots post attack messages with just commenter permissions.  The other major benefit of a bloghost comes from the fact that while they may have millions of users of their software they have very few users on the actual physical machines.  With my shared server cheapo LAMP host I can’t say the same for this site, as dozens of other random net users have shell accounts on the box and are hosting their questionable code.  I like Dreamhost, as they tend to offer pretty good service with gobs of storage and bandwidth at very cutthroat prices, plus they have a pyramid scheme where you make money off of people you refer (hence the presence of the "Hosted by Dreamhost" links… just hoping to milk some folk looking for a cheap but relatively good LAMP host), but even if they are great as a shared server host it doesn’t change the fact that they are ultimately a shared server host.  I don’t exactly keep anything I value sitting on their hard drives because of that, so I was a little leery of investing time in a blog hosted on servers I don’t have a great sense of security concerning.

That said, hosted blogs have several drawbacks.  Many are designed around the idea of a social experience, e.g MySpace, Facebook, etc, and I think the focus on social components in those cases detracts from them as specifically blogs.  Then you have your dedicated blog hosts that skip much of the social stuff, Wordpress.com, Typepad, Blogspot, etc.  In the case of Wordpress.com and Typepad it seemed that I would be just as much at the mercy of the respective wordpad and moveable type flaws as if I hosted my own blog, but without the benefit of being able to take my own measures to lock things down.  Blogspot is such a pit of malware that Google de-lists it regularly, which given the fact that Google freaking owns it isn’t a stellar endorsement.

Finally, with any of the hosted solutions I don’t have much control over things.  The level of customization is limited and usually requires people to jump around hoops (in the case of myspace it seems that every user must embed some music, make copious use of blink tags and scrolling text, and have an animated background, which I sort of got over in 1994 back when all of those things were all the rage).  When it comes down to it I find it easier just to fire up textpad and edit the layout directly in the source rather than muck around with some style editor or play with layout templates and modules.  I like that I am the only one that gets a say over whether my site has ads (none at the moment, but when I am a super Internet star that may change), where those ads are, how big they are, etc.  In the end being able to control everything about my site trumped being responsible for its maintenance.  And here I thought it would be nice to leave that sort of thing for when I was doing my real paying job. 

So watch out, I have complete control of the layout, free to completely abuse rounded corners and segregated content panels.  I also have my resolution set to 1920×1200 so the site may not be sympathetic to you folks rocking the 1024×768 (come one guys, my 12" tablet PC has a better resolution than that).  Tweaks are likely to trickle in throughout the month as I decide to ad or remove stuff, or finally decide to install safari in a VM and see how bad the browser mangles it (Apple security is so abysmal these days that I won’t run their stuff on my host OS).

Anyway, any early wayward readers that have stumbled upon the site, feel free to use the comment thread to leave feedback on its design.  I haven’t spent a great deal of time testing its layout. 

~ Joshbw