My Blog
The personal blog of me, Tim Trott. What I get up to, photography, news and so on.
On the future of Lonewolf Online…
Sunday 20th July 2008
I am finding myself thinking long and hard about the future of this website, I’ll explain why in a minute, but first a little history.
I started this website way back in early 2005 as a bunch of static html files, by late 2005 early 2006 it had evolved into a PHP based database driven site much like the one you see now. I had written every line of code to create a dynamic website, created my own photo gallery software, created my own blogging tool, administration pages, guest book and more. I had created a platform on which I could create multiple websites using the same code base.
Eventually I found myself writing new functionality into my site that replicated that of other blog tools (Wordpress) and in the end I ditched my own blog code and integrated Wordpress into my site. Hopefully the merging of the Wordpress site and my existing site is seamless. I have since created a few more sites using Wordpress as a content management system with great success.
Now I find myself in a situation where I need to write more functionality to various aspects of my site - content management, gallery maintenance, comment handling and so on. These are all features that Wordpress has built in, so here is my pickle: do I write new code to incorporate the new features into my existing framework, or do I switch the whole site over to a Wordpress back end system?
This post is filed under Site News by Lonewolf at 11:09am
What Others Are Saying
Lonewolf
Posted on Thursday 14th August 2008 at 7:39pm
Author
Its done! I have converted this site to 100% Wordpress powered.
I was able to re-use some code, but most of it has been replaced with Wordpress themes, page templates and plugins.
I have also added a load of cool Ajax and Javascript stuff, such as milkbox lightbox to show off my pictures and the very cool mooFlow spinning thumbnail slide show. I have also used a few of the excellent scripts from phatfusion, all of which use the mooTools Javascript framework.
Hopefully these and a few other enhancements make the site easier to use and a little friendlier.
I may package the old scripts up and post them as snippets or tutorials in the future, like zam suggested.
Hope you like the new look and feel.
zam
Posted on Thursday 7th August 2008 at 7:27pm
Comment
It’s really fantastic and brilliant that you have built your own blog tools. If you change to Wordpress, your own blog tools maybe will be a waste. So, my suggestion..
1. Keep on develop your own blog tools and bundle it and give away free or sale it as one completes blog tools. OR
2. Use wordpress, all your blog tools convert to plugin and give away for free or sell it.
Just my oipnion.
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