Blogging with Nettalk?

[Gregg Matteson]

After much research I decided on Drupal for a new blog/content management site. I'm becoming frustrated very quickly with what I can't do. I'm wondering why you couldn't create the same functionality with NetTalk Web server. A search of this forum showed nothing . So is this a dumb idea? Other than a possible disadvantage of having to host on a windows based server, I don't see a downside.

Anyone else considered it?

Regards,

Gregg Matteson

[Alan Telford]

Gregg,

Look at http://www.pimpmyclarion.com/.
He talks about a tool called "jaymoe", which is a blog/forum etc tool.

Alan

[Stu]

Alan, Cheers for the pimp'n!

Gregg, the product Alan is talking about is a very VERY basic engine for serving Pages, Images and a Forum interface. What you'd really want to do is bling it up, and add a lot of small refined functionality (like Wordpress has).

Stu

[Gregg Matteson]

Stu,

It's been about 9 weeks since the initial post about this and I've dumped my original regular website and started creating a new blog based site using Drupal. A bit of a learning curve but reasonably flexible. Lot's to still learn about this stuff.

Have a look at this site done with Drupal by some folks that know what they are doing:
http://www.observer.com/ Note that they created their theme from scratch.

My new site is here (just getting started) http://www.customprogramsolutions.com/


I still think that in time we will be able to use Nettalk to create blog type sites. 

Regards,

Gregg Matteson

[Stu]

Gregg,

Nice site! Very bloggy. I kind of fell into Wordpress, not hearing about Drupal till later. Looks like it's a viable engine.

So kudos.

One question .. are you wanting people to register before commenting?

[Gregg Matteson]

Stu,

Thanks. Regarding logging in before comment, I consciously set it that way for now. Frankly I don't know what is best. I'm perhaps being too careful. I've seen a few tech sites get spammed real bad and it makes a mess. What's your experience?

Still lot's to learn. Seems that the hardest part is customizing it to make it look like a normal site. A gallon of PHP and 2 gallons of CSS and stir for hours

[Stu]

Gregg,

With Wordpress, there are a couple of really good spam filters .. so you don't have to make people register and login to comment. I'm not savvy with Drupal, but i reckon it'd have something similar.

http://drupal.org/project/spam

Found that page googling. Might be of use? You might already have been there.

Cheers,

Stu

[Gregg Matteson]

Stu,

Thanks for the link. That's one of the few I hadn't messed with and I don't recall seeing it. Added it and changed things so that anonymous users can post comments.

Not enough hours in a day!

Thank you,

[Stu]

Sweet!

{ heads off to post spam comments }

[Gregg Matteson]

Stu,

Per your suggestions , I found where I could add contact info fields to the comment form and did so. Not pretty put it works.

Next up is all of the SEO stuff to get set correctly.

Thanks,

Gregg

[Stu]

Gregg,

Nice work. Just posted another comment.

The SEO can be a pain .. at least, it was for my brain. Wordpress has got some pretty cool tricks and plugins to alleviate the pain. I imagine Drupal will too.

Stu

[Gregg Matteson]

Stu,

You are correct. Drupal has a module that is a checklist of what can be done to maximize SEO and the related modules to use.

For those that are following this thread note that as of this date my new site is totally done with drupal , adding and configuring various modules and NO CODING  with PHP or CSS yet.

learn more about Drupal at: http://drupal.org/
check out the forum and the site showcase: http://drupal.org/forum/25

Thanks Stu for your input .

Gregg

http://www.customprogramsolutions.com/