Here’s the second part of my blogging history:

• Pebble 2.0M1 (March 2005). This version of Pebble requires a JSP 1.3 and Servlet 2.4 compliant application server. In order to upgrade, I sent a request to my host to move my account to a server with Resin 3.x. The move was done in a couple of days. The old version of Pebble didn’t work with Resin 3, and I didn’t bother to find out why. I started the migration to Pebble 2.0 right away, and the template was much better, now using a CSS layout. I also noticed that the templates had been simplified, although this wasn’t as good as it seemed cause further modification of the layout requires delving into files in the WEB-INF/jsp directory. After working on the template for about five days, it was ready, and I upgraded. Some bugs in the JSTL libraries of my host’s Resin installation prevented it from working right away. The stack trace was so large that the JSP support in my account was disabled. I also found a couple of major bugs in this release of Pebble: Edit and delete posts didn’t work, and the RSS feeds were not working. On the bright side, this version added support for tags, which I have found to be a good fit to my blogging style.
  Since my host practically banned Pebble from my site (although there might still be hope), and based on the bugs I found I started looking for alternatives.
• WordPress 2.0.2 (later March 2005). My host has three supported blogs installed via the Fantastico icon in cpanel: Nucleus, pMachine (Free) and WordPress. My brother has been working with Nucleus and had to modify some source files in order to get the look that he was after. I decided to try out WordPress, and even though I don’t like PHP too much I liked the templates and the great number of plugins available. I created a new template based on the default and moved things around a bit to match my site’s style. The only thing that I’m lacking is the navigation links in my top bar, since I have yet to investigate if it can be incorporated easily into that spot. Overall I’m liking WordPress although I’ve found it a bit slow.

That’s the end to my blogging history. You will notice a trend in my blogging attempts, I usually get as far as setting up the blog and customizing it to the look & feel of my site, but I do not add many entries. I’ll try to post more often from now on. If you are reading, you can encourage my efforts by commenting.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 28th, 2006 at 11:01 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.