So I’m thinking about moving my blog (AGAIN WTF??). Even though I was in love w/ Movabletype for a time I think WordPress may be a better solution.
Wordpad has a somewhat simpler interface for templating, and it soon will feature support for multiple blogs, so it will be pretty much feature compatible w/ MT. Also, while it doesn’t support typekey at the moment, it does allow me to only allow people who have been approved comment. That means the first time you comment it is moderated, then I approve you (or blacklist you) and you can post any old time. Finally, it isn’t spam friendly like MT is. MT allows someone to us the file mt-comment.cgi w/ some junk apppended at the end to be used as a direct conduit to write comments (or trackbacks as well). The means it is easy generate a script to spam the hell out of a blog.
Also, I think that the PHP driven style might be the next level of my personal understanding of web development. And the only way to grow is to force myself to use it. I really like this idea of generating my entire webpage from within wordpress, and I think I have some great ideas for plugins to make controlling an entire website from within a single install of WP. But more on this later.
Well, I’ve been pondering ideas lately for updating content for the churches website. I have made mention in the past that I hate the way some churches do it, and it seems silly to not include some kind of RSS feed that alerts people as to when content has been updated (calenders, sermon pages, ministry updates, etc.) So I’ve been given a shot at showing Jeff a proof-of-concept idea for how to update and maintain a site of this style. I just have to run it on a personal site for a while, and show him that it is 1) working w/o breaking and 2) actually does useful things….not just bells and whistle things that are “neat” (which I tend to favor on my personal site).
Problem is, he also likes things really simple, so he can keep tabs on what is going on.
So that has prompted me to divide current web content into four categories (one of which might be actually included in another one). And what I want to do is list some pro’s and con’s of each style of web development, and get some feedback on those, as well as any pro’s and con’s I haven’t thought of.
1. Statically coded HTML. This is a site that is maintained by the brute force of the person running it. Anything needs to be updated, then they add it w/ all the appropriate HTML to format it correctly. The upside of this is that people who learned zero html or css (or whatever) can update this from dreamweaver or frontpage. The downside is that it SUCKS huge monkey balls to manage if you have any content regularly updating.
2. Mostly statically coded HTML. This is me thinking if we want to podcast a sermon we could have a script that helps aid in uploading the file, and updating some links. Nothing major, just a PHP script that can update a few files. The negative side of this security. It would most likely be run w/in a password protected directory (via .htaccess), but that seems a little light. Plus I don’t know PHP very well so I would have to learn some more at a fast pace to do this.
3. Database stores content, and static pages are generated from within a script that reads the database. This is what movabletype does. These systems are great if you aren’t constantly having someone post content to your site. If your server is constantly rebuilding your pages this can load down quickly. But the upside is easily maintained templates (involves knowing some HTML, CSS, and getting familiar w/ what template tags do what). Content can be easily updated by anyone. It would mean a webhead has to install it, but after that a user can be created to run the site. I would only have a problem if it broke (or if your host decides to break it, like mine did). A downside is that to add fun stuff like “currently reading” and some other additions it requires modifying the database which can break the application during upgrades (which is what I go through when I upgrade MT). Also, some content would still have to be managed statically since MT has no way to control other pages.
4. Database stores content, pages are fed up dynamically from a php script based site. This is what WordPress does. It adds a little overhead to the server to feed up pages, but drastically reduces server CPU utilization in some cases because there is no rebuilding for each comment posted. This style also (at least within wordpress) gives you more flexibility to control some static pages from within the application. This option also is easier to set-up. (I did this in five minutes between getting out of the shower and going to work this morning.
So, I want ideas, feedback, whatever about this kind of a project.
What would you use and why? What do most church sites lack that they should have, and what is a good way to implement that feature? At the bare minimum I am thinking I want an easy way to upload sermons, and to have a script generate an updated list of online sermons along with a feed for RSS / podcasting. And I want a calander that has a list of upcoming activities, because those are two things I think a tech-savy church should have on their site.
Again, none of this may end up ever getting on our churches site. But if I do this work, at least people will know what is available / possible. Too often I think churches fall behind the technological curve, and young (tech) people like me tend to see that as the church being irrelevant in the world today. At least if I compile some options, people will know what is out there, and what technologies are available.