Journal, September 19, 2021

Step 1: point domain at a thing.  Done.

Step 2: put some words on the thing so people can see it.  Done.

Step 3: make thing domain points at more complex. Done.

Step 4: make complex thing easy to edit so more words can be put on the thing.  In progress.

A while back I tossed together some PHP for a proof of concept.  I reflected on my disdain for content management platforms like WordPress.  There's a few reasons I don't like content management platforms: first, they're a constant target for script attacts, and second, they're massive, bloated, and overburdened with features.  There's a part of me that wants to just toss some basic html up and call it a day - no attack vector, no bloat.  No convenience.  No complexity.  Boring.  Thinking back to the old days, I rolled my own content management system from the ground up.  It's dreadfully simple (you're looking at it) but it does exactly what I need.  I can add new pages (check!), give them vanity urls (check!), embed a video (check!), order them in a table of contents (check!), easily customize categories and sub-menus (check!), and edit things without mucking about in the database (so check, much wow!).  There's a few pieces I need to work on, of course.  That table of contents is manually designated, so re-ordering contents is basically math homework.  I don't have a system in place to upload binary data.  There's still some ... quirky behavior.  But for a first pass, I think it'll do.

I suppose every project starts somewhere.  I think this is a good start, and it's got enough room to grow that I can duct-tape some stuff on it as the need arises.

-dirgo