Index Page

For my personal blog, I'd like to manage visitors comments in an unique, fine tuned way. I would like only those who join, to see the comments but not only that, my members will only see their own comments (no one else's) and my responses to them.

I'm not interested in an online argument or abuse for my medical history, personal thoughts, beliefs and opinions. Nor am I interested having to moderate comments or be ganged up on or astroturfed, just a rational discussion of what I think, and how I came to that conclusion, to help people understand me more. Feel free to ask questions, begin a discussion or show me (with some proof) where I am wrong. Spam filters are configured, swear word filters are too so I will not see emails that contain them. I will periodically change my email address so if something bounces, check for a new address.

I have an aging, slowing brain but probably had 5 more weeks, stuck in hospital, hence wanting to do something stimulating with my time.

What do I need to look at to accomplish this? I'm a little bit of a geek. I have some knowledge of programming, a small knowledge of creating mysql databases and a smaller knowledge of php. A quick look around, Wordpress was eliminated for many reasons and Joomla chosen as a likely candidate. It became obvious, after some 40hrs of research and trying different things on local installs, that Joomla could not easily do what I needed. Yes I could pay someone to code an addon but the sheer overkill of what Joomla does made me move on.

OK let's try Drupal, hmmmm armed with what I learned from Joomla, 8hrs more work and Drupal too was dropped.

I filtered through a list of 8 or so more likely prospects and choose django but the difficulties involved in installing without full access to the server, caused me to give up.

I spent some time trying to find python blog software, as it now seemed I was going to have to modify something to suit or learn to code this thing myself. So many installs and so many requiring major software frameworks to do so much more than I ever would need. Several more days of checking out python software and that and I finally gave up, well for now anyway.

Finally after 8 weeks, I spent some time creating a static template using the Bluefish code editor. At least the blogs will begin to go up even if things don't work how I planned.

I may revisit this and separate headers, footers, menus, tags and the main page, into frames to make writing pages quicker. Or I may figure out how to write the pages in python using the html from these. Maybe I can then add users and configure comments to work like I want them.