Rolling my own

I’ve spent some time over the past few days getting to grips with Ruby on Rails and Typo once again with a view (again) to replacing Textpattern. Typo has come a long way in a short time, and has some the very nice features. That said, I still feel I’m adapting my site to suit the engine, so I think it’s back to the drawing board.

I’ve also been busy using and evaluating various popular web applications:

• del.icio.us
• Backpack
• Ta-da Lists
• Flickr
• Upcoming
• 43 Things
• 43 Places

All are good. All provide what they promise, but all just don’t feel right to me.

Why?

Because I have my own server, and the ability to do these things for myself. Yes this makes me the exception rather than the rule, but when this is taken into account the only real benefits to those applications are:

1. They’re already available
2. “Everyone” is using them
3. They are (mostly) social applications

I’ve never been comfortable being a sheep following the flock, and I don’t like adapting my requirements to meets the services being offered. Why should I be limited to a 20MB/month upload (or pay the pro account) when I already have the bandwidth and hardware to host as many photos as I like.

As I said, I have the ability to write my own application(s) that will meet my own requirements. The only problem is if I do, I will lose the social aspect of some of the other offerings. That said, with the exception of del.icio.us I can find the social side distracting.

So, I think it’s time to expend some real effort on rolling my own blog software, combining the notes and lists features of Backpack and at least providing integration with other services if not replacing them.

Watch this space…