Let me reiterate the last sentence. Having a Django-based blog just because Django is fashinable is a little dumb in my opinion. If Django-based X blogging engine suits you better than anything else, use it. Why not? But my personal choice of blogging engine is WordPress¹. The value of a Django blogging app, for me, is in adding a blog to a Django project. And different projects might have different requirements. So my idea of a Django blogging app is one that is highly configurable and highly extendable.

On the other hand I don’t need the convenience of clicking a checkbox on a polished UI. I can write a function. Or I don’t necessarily need it to, say, provide a navigation menu. There are apps that do that. Even if there wasn’t it shouldn’t be the blog app’s job. So I am not looking for an instant-blog. I have a Django app in my mind, nothing more.

What Should Be Left Out

Basically any feature that can be provided by another reusable app should be left out. Why should we re-implement something that is already done… and reviewed by others… and tested. Of course this doesn’t necessarily mean providing no convenience functions.

• No admin. Because we already have one.
• No theming. For the love of Flying Spaghetti Monster, you don’t need any theming other than what django.template offers. Pre-built themes are for turn-key solutions.
• No comments or contact forms. (See django.contrib.comments and django-contact-form)
• No official markup format (or formats). This can be handled in the templates without difficulty. But, maybe, pluggable content filters is a good idea. I haven’t made up my mind on this one entirely. It won’t use any markup format by default, that is for sure.

What Should Be Included

Remember, every project has a different set of needed features for its blog. Some need catagories, some need tags and some others need both. But it would end up as a disaster if we implemented each one of those features into a single app. Instead I think it should consist of many small apps that work together. But I wouldn’t want to end up having huge spaghetti of apps that all depend on one another, like Pinax does. A minimal amount of core apps² and then everything else should be optional. By optional I mean you don’t have to install packages you won’t need.

I think the components (apps) should be activated via adding to INSTALLED_APPS and configured with settings. I can’t think of any parameter that needs to be changed dynamically, so why not use the established way of doing configuration in Django.

Two must have features for such a blogging app are previews and scheduled publishing. It is possible that you sometimes write a post quickly and publish it immediately. But I suppose nobody will say they don’t care about these two features.

Built-in feeds and sitemaps are also nice to have.

Multiple instances of this blogging app running on the same project? À la admin. I can’t make my mind on this one. Sure it would be a nice feature. But it could complicate the code. Peehaps too much for a not so common case.

What do you think about the general idea? Are there any other must-have features? Would you be willing to learn a new app when you are already comfortable with another blogging app?

1: Even though it’s written in the abomination called PHP. But since there are plugins for everything I don’t have to touch the code.

2: One sounds like a good number, if possible.

Related posts:

1. Django: Where Should My App Live
2. Developing Reusable Django Apps: App Settings
3. Developing Reusable Django Apps

gençlerin türkçe bilgiye ihtiyacı var. türkçe yazsanıza!

Translation: Young people need Turkish articles. Why don’t you write in Turkish!

Let’s ask this as a question, or a more relevant question of why I am writing my blog in English, at the end of this post.

People Who Just Can’t Admit They’re Wrong

I am always shopping for new blogs for my RSS reader. Especially blogs written in Turkish. Not only because of Turkish is my mother tongue. But mainly because there are so few, you have to keep searching all the time. So far I’ve followed many blogs only to find out they’re by far and large not for me. Except for FZ Blogs of course, FZ rocks.

Then I’ve found this other blog, with FZ’s suggestion. It is in Turkish, check! tech/internet/programming related, check! Then I subscribed it happily. An article published today led to that e-mail in the beginning. It looked like an innocent article about Google Ventures until the final part.

Bir takım ahmakların dayattıkları genel fikir, halihazırda yurtdışında mevcut bir sistemi ne kadar çabuk kopyalayarak bir “.com” şirketi açarsanız o kadar başarılı olabileceğiniz yönünde. Bu senaryoda ileri teknoloji kullanımı, yaratıcılık, tasarım, özgünlük gibi unsurlar geri plana atılmış durumda.

Translation: Some fools are spreading the idea that the quicker you can duplicate an existing dotcom business the more successful you become. Advanced technologies, creativity, design and originality are neglected in this scenario.

Belli başlı, az sayıda ve sistemin çarpıklığından palazlanmış büyük oyuncu, etraflarına bazı çığırtkan ve spekülatif insanları toplayarak, kendi aralarında bir birlik oluşturmuşlar ve kendi aralarındaki rekabete rağmen, dışardan oyuna katılmak isteyenlere karşı düşmanca ve dışlayıcı bir tavır içindeler. Aslında bu primitif bir oyun, sektör var, oyuncular ve oyuncu olmayanlar var, oyuncular oyuna yeni oyuncu girmesini engellemek için işbirliği yaparken kendi aralarında da rekabet ediyorlar. Durum kabaca bundan ibaret.

Translation: Some big players, who had grown rich out of deformities of the system, gathering speculators and barkers around, formed an alliance, despite competition amongst themselves, to cast newcomers out. This is actually a simple game, there is the industry, players and non players, players are competing with each other while they cooperate to obstruct new players. This is roughly the situation

Naturally I asked if they could back that claim up. Are big players really trying to crush new startups? How exactly are they doing that?

I got no response to that comment, no big surprise. Instead I received the e-mail I mentioned in the beginning. Why? Because we love throwing mud at successful and not-so-successful¹. Of course there’s no such secret allience between big players of Internet industry in Türkiye. At the very most they are (naturaly) protecting their investment. This is neither illegal nor immoral. If you actually have anything to support you claim Mr Consultant I’d be happy to read. Otherwise you should just admit you were wrong and fix that post.

Guilty Conscience

Just trying to move the conversation into private, shows that you have nothing meaningful to say about the evil secret cult of Internet companies. That’s not even an e-mail you have sent me. It is more like an IM message pasted in an e-mail composer.

gençlerin türkçe bilgiye ihtiyacı var. türkçe yazsanıza!

Why don’t we pay the minimum attention to aviod being a situation where we end up being wrong. And more importantly why do we still insist even after we realize we are wrong. Say, if you give crack/warez links in your blog and then claim the software/media in question is public domain. And then when presentented with link to its official site where it is being sold (ie. not abandonware) you are supposed to try to make fun of people who did the warning? This is why I don’t, I can’t follow any Turkish bloggers.

Justification of stealing is bad for the person and bad for the community. Same is true with needless feces throwing and flaming corporate hatred.

Mr Consultant, I liked your blog. I want to follow it, I want to refer it to my friends, I want to learn something from it. So, please put some effort in when writing. I also like your web application yazboz.com a lot. It may be another duplicate of a well known class of applications you were bashing in your post². But I like it. And I hope it becomes a big success.

Why Am I Torturing You With My Broken English?

The young needs Turkish information sources, eh? No! The young need to drag his sorry ass and learn English first. And then he should go read something of substance. And then if he has some time to kill he can read my blog. I am not an expert or guru or anything like that. I don’t have a mission or inclination to educate the young.

Trying to translate all the knowledge (written in English) on the Internet is absurdly, disproportionally more work than individually learning English, that it is plain stupid to even think about suggesting it.

I am writing in English for the following reasons:

• It is a nice filter. If you are too lazy to learn enough English, I have nothing to say to you³.
• Internet language is English⁴, insist on ignoring this fact and you will stay under-developed. On the contrary the more nationalistic you behave the more marginalized you get. If you are truly for technological advancement you can do nothing but to be pragmatic. Also I love and respect my languge. That is why I don’t butcher it trying to write technical stuff half English half Turkish.
• In support of the first point; writing in English allows me to connect to a larger and better equipped community. So yes, instead of script kiddes who’ll never get past LAMP, I prefer a pythonista visiting my blog to at least get an idea of what kind of person I am.

If, for some odd reason, a young person were to listen to my advice, I’d like to repeat; learn decent English. Especially if you are a programmer. Get a book, a real book not one of those educational materials, and read it. It’s simple as that. Or all you’ll will be have to read is Mr. Consultant’s blog.

EDIT:
Author of mentioned post removed the second quote, about Internet investors, along with my comment there.

1: …and we love pissing contests. Just reply a question with another question, try to find the weak spot. look, I can piss further!

2: See the first quote.

3: This is of course in context of this Blog; mainly programming and programmers.

4: Arc supports only ASCII

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2. Sad State of Web Development Industry in Türkiye
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I think RSS is one of the most helpful tools of web. It is easy, efficient and non-distractive. If you choose who you follow well, you would have an endless flow of useful information. I think everyone should use RSS. If you are not already following any feeds, you can start with Fazlamesai (in Turkish) or Slashdot.

First thing IRC reminds me is thousands of people sitting in front of computers asking each other ASL? or doing some other useless small talk. Let me add almost none of those people in this picture knows for sure whether the others are actually who they say they are. And a significant number of them just fake their identity (such as a thirty nine year old guy impersonating a eighteen year old girl). Not a healthy environment. But if you can turn your head from all the fun these chat rooms offer you can find chat rooms, for example, where open source people gather and help each other. Just find and enter your favourite software’s chat room, #python, #firefox, #debian…

I started using Plurk, first becase I was curious about amix‘s startup. Then I decided to stay a little longer to further analyze how they have integrated game elements in their application. Then I kept on Plurking to get to know the people (early adapters) and to witness the evolution of a social network. I still use Plurk almost everyday, because it gives you the feeling that it is working¹.

Plurk is a so-called persistent chat application. You can think of it as a cross-breed between instant messaging and e-mail. It is possible to carry on real-time conversations, but when you come back later you can still find (and participate) older discussions. I think you can do this with other micro-blogging applications (such as Twitter), at least with their desktop clients. With Plurk this is possible in the browser.

It is not just AJAX that makes Plurk an attractive service. It has an elegant and feature rich interface. Posts are laid out (horizontally) on a timeline that you can scroll with your mouse. When you click on one of the posts it expands itself down to show you the comments and other details. No page loads. You can also fully customize the interface, change the appereance, hide some elements, add new ones… If you check out Plurk, you will see it is designed to be fun.

I think introducing this fun element is very important. We don’t do micro-blogging because we need to, it doesn’t solve any of our everyday problems. We do it because we want to socialize and have fun. Fun is normally a product of social interaction. But if you can make the interaction itself fun as well, that is so much better. Plurk has badges and a karma system. Basically you earn karma if you plurk frequently and in quality. The more karma you earn the more you quirks you get, such as adding a profile title or unlocking smileys. Now, this may sound silly to you. Why should we care? Well, you might not care, but in general people do care. Playing is the first complex skill we have learned, so we have a natural tendency to play even in adulthood.

There is one last thing I would like to mention. I think this is important too, for a successfull web service. Plurk changes, (naturally) it changes in place, and it changes to conform your usage. One example for that is when I noticed the “US Elections 2008″ tab. It just appeared next to “All Plurks”, “My Plurks”, “Private” tabs one day. That’s a nice thing. But, wait there’s more. The next day an X appeared on the right of that tab. Not being an U.S.A citizen I clicked it and the tab disappeared. Which is also nice. But, wait there’s even more. The next day the elections tab didn’t show up again. Nothing, fancy. Just as one would have expected. But very important. Does many of your everyday services pay special attention to details like this. Users do, at least in a sub-conscious level. It is like having a new piece of clothing and feeling that you have been happily wearing it for years. It just fits.

So, what was I saying? Little distractions. But you need to manage them. You want a short cool off period, not losing focus all together. Plurk is a nice nice service. IRC still has something to offer. RSS is the king for me. But I still have work to do now. Introducing distractions without proper discipline quickly turn into inefficiency.

1: This deserves a post of its own.

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