I'm working on a programming project as the sole developer of a browser-based software application. I've dubbed it "PHPText Blogger" as a working name because it's only using PHP and text files formatted specifically for this application.

In order to use this browser-based application on Windows or Linux, I only need to have a web server installed which includes the PHP software. I'm using XAMPP for Windows right now.


Design Goals

The main goal of the project is to create an application that runs on the local computer and not the online web server. The data and pages created by the software are to be transferred to the online server at the click of a button. The online server would only host the minimally-required files to run a full-featured blog. Pretty permalinks won't be required since the blog will live in whatever directory it gets installed on, pulling the data files and pages from a subdirectory of where it lives.

This application will be perfectly suited for small, niche blogs that don't require constant updates. It will run extremely fast since the bloat that WordPress is now famous for won't be there. It would probably work well for a blog containing thousands of posts, but transferring the information from a MySQL database would be daunting.

I would like to incorporate caching and compression from the start but until I get to the final stages, I can't be sure how to implement it all. Caching may not increase the speed or reduce the HTTP connections since a database is not being continually queried. Compression shouldn't be a problem, but I won't need to add that part until the back end is nearly finished.

The final product is going to be designed to be fast and portable, working with PHP4 as well as PHP5 and on Windows or Linux. Specific PHP5 functions will be emulated for PHP4, such as "file_put_contents" and "date_default_timezone_set".

The Reasons for my Madness

I've been using WordPress for this blog for more than 2 years. I've been examining other applications, such as b2evolution, but all of them have similar overhead bloat in the software which defeats the idea of simplicity.

WordPress started out as the perfect software for self-hosted blogs but as it progressed, it started catering to too many different kinds of bloggers. It's an all-in-one kind of package with bloat that's starting to look like something I'd expect from Microsoft.

WordPress now includes a lot of features that a lot of us (meaning bloggers) neither want nor need. Many of the features require plugins or changes to the configuration file to either change the behavior or disable it completely. Including features that can't be turned off from any of the main administration panels is the straw that broke the camel's back, my back.

Status Updates

I've already completed the basic framework and I'm working on the main administration page (blog titles, descriptions, timezone settings, etc.) with most of it already done.

Rather than writing about it at every stage, I prefer to keep quiet about it for the foreseeable future, keeping only my noble UV minions apprised of the continuing development.

The alpha version should be completed by the end of August (probably sooner) and the first beta version should be ready within days of that milestone. I'm in a hurry to get it done because I plan to use it for some new blogs I haven't starting working on yet. I'm not sure at this point how good it's going to be, but one thing it won't be is WordPress.