Re: filestat - a different perspective

On Fri, 20 Aug 2004, Wai Yip Tung wrote:
>
> How many pyBlosxom users are not Python hackers? My bet is nearly none.
> pyBlosxom have just enough functionality to us v.s. a complete blogging
> application. We are happy to hack the rest to suit the way we want.

If you check the mailing list and do a google search for "pyblosxom",
you'll notice there's a group of folks who are not hackers, do not want to
code, and just want things to work.

Even in the last few days there have been posts from people who just want
things to work.  People who want flavours to drop in; people who want
plugins to install and configure them selves; ... so on so forth.

So maybe there are different levels of "hackers" ranging from some who
hack everything to some who hack very very little and only when they know
exactly what they're doing.  (shrug)

When I said "hackers" I was thinking more of the group of people who go
in, play with stuff, read the code, and figure most things out on their
own and then ask the mailing list for additional thoughts or post possible
solutions.

Hope that doesn't offend anyone...


> Perhaps we should really rebrand pyBlosxom not as a blogging application
> like MovableType but a toolkit for building your own blog.

GAH!  Marketing!


> I still think it is good to have at least one decent template as a
> demonstration. Kust so not to turn off new users before they have a
> chance to evaluate it.

We have one.  If you run pyblosxom with no flavour files, then you use the
default template.  I wrote it--it's pretty decent.  It's also html
compliant and so on so forth.  The code for it is hard-coded in the
renderer so that I could reduce the number of steps to installation which
should be:

  1. copy pyblosxom.cgi and config.py to your cgi directory.
  2. edit the contents of config.py making sure to follow the directions.
  3. create a datadir
  4. write your first post

Done.  That's all there is to it.  I suspect some of the people having
problems early on aren't following these directions--they're trying to do
everything at the same time (plugins, flavours, configuration, ...).  But
maybe not.  It's hard to make observations on how many people do what
because I suspect most of them never say anything.

/will


-------------------------------------------------------
SF.Net email is sponsored by Shop4tech.com-Lowest price on Blank Media
100pk Sonic DVD-R 4x for only $29 -100pk Sonic DVD+R for only $33
Save 50% off Retail on Ink & Toner - Free Shipping and Free Gift.
http://www.shop4tech.com/z/Inkjet_Cartridges/9_108_r285