Ranting Kenya

Ever wanted to create a simple blog without needing to do the whole Wordpress deal? Maybe you just want to create something on your local machine for your own personal use. Heck, coding your own blog is also a good way to show a potential employer that you have at least some coding chops.

Well, I’m going to attempt to help the absolute beginner create just that. I myself am no PHP expert, but I’ve managed to learn enough that I think I could help other beginners. I’m sure some of the ways that I’m coding things are not necessarily the best possible method, but I’m open to comments and suggestions. I’m learning too, after all.

So what type of sections will these posts cover? Well as of right now this is my plan (I’m sure it’ll change soon):

• Installing a server on your local machine
• Creating your database and tables
• Connecting your PHP pages to the database
• Setting Privileges
• Creating the various pages (front page with loop, individual posts etc.)
• Creating the forms for content entry
• Post tagging
• Integrating Tiny MCE for content entry
• Allowing simple user comments
• Creating a tag cloud
• Working with excerpts (both automatic and custom)
• Uploading images to your server

Some things I’d like to include but will won’t necessarily includes user logins, admin logins, and security.

I’m going to assume then that you know basic (X)HTML at the very least. Minimal CSS knowledge will also help in a few spots.

I’m hoping this will help other beginners get over some of the bumps and hitches that I’ve experienced more quickly than when I was facing with them.

I have no exact timeline for when these posts will come out, but my plan will be to post at least once a week.

I’ve made the plunge. Finally.

I’ve heard a lot about Twitter, I’ve decided to finally try it. It was Wired that convinced me. I figure if they can find some value in it, then I guess I’ll give it a shot. You can see it on my right hand side column.

I’m still holding out on Facebook though.

Well, what do you think? Now it’s a theme, edited from a theme, edited from a theme. Yeah, the code and CSS is getting a little lame. Maybe one day I’ll be popular enough to clean it up.

To anyone asking for a Joost beta invite, here’s the official word:

Can I invite friends to join Joost™?

Yes! Keep an eye on the web site and blog in the next few weeks and you’ll see that you’ve been assigned special tokens that will let you invite your friends. In the meantime, we’re sorry but we’ve currently closed the beta test application form while we process the applications we already have.

I’m thinking, depending on the number of “golden tickets” that I receive, I may run a contest to give away the invites to Joost. I may also just give them away to anyone. Maybe once the invites are available, anyone will be able to get one anyway. We’ll see how things go.

Well, I have finally taken the plunge. As a web designer, one of the things you kind of need is a website. Crazy I know. Well, I have got my web-space care of dreamhost, and this blog care of wordpress. Now, I’m only just beginning to teach myself javascript, and php and mysql are on the palette as well. Thank goodness my HTML and CSS are solid (though I will have a few minor adaptations for XHTML). What that means is for now, I will have a wordpress theme, and it will likely slowly morph into a design of my own. Learning this in my spare time will certainly take time. Here we go…