The Blog.

I've decided it's finally time to develop a new theme for my site. I thought I'd take some cues from the Ubuntu web guidelines, but I think I've managed to still make it my own.

Most notably, I've decided to use the new Ubuntu font throughout my site. Even if you don't have the Ubuntu font installed, it should show up across my site.

I've also chosen a slightly different color scheme compared to the previous (current) one; the green has been darkened, the background has been changed to a more blue tone, and I've removed the red and blue accents.

Finally, I decided it was time for a true sidebar. On the right side of the site there will be a recent posts section along with some other sidebar-type content.

Check out the in-development theme here and let me know what you think in the comments!

As a forewarning, this post is half test post for a new identi.ca integration feature and half real post.

I've wanted to begin developing my own little blogging platform for some time now, but never got around to doing it. Well, after a lot of hacking around on my ancient code (seriously, this site was the first code I'd ever written in PHP), I feel like I can actually work toward making a simple and slick blogging platform.

I've decided (for now, at least) to call it cJblog (or cJb for short) for Cassidy James Blog[ging Platform]. It's also ironic because C.J.B. happen to be my initials. I'm not at the point where I can package everything up and let you download/install it on your own server, but that's my next major goal.

Some cool new features, however, have been integrated! As I posted earlier, I've integrated Disqus comments. It makes setting up and managing comments a breeze, so I figured it's a better route than my hacked together custom solution. I may switch back to a custom solution eventually, but this will let me focus on more features.

I have also just integrated a syndicate-to-identi.ca feature. In fact, this is the first post to ever implement it. I still have a lot of work to do, but the skeleton is forming and it's shaping up to be pretty cool.

No, I'm not copying Engadget with this move (though they did kind of convince me to finally do it), but as of right now, all comments on the site have been switched over to Disqus. I think that works out better in the long run because it lets people post easier and faster than possible with my hackish commenting system.

It's not defeat! I still want to crank my hand-coded blogging system out and add my own features, it just might use Disqus by design since it's such a sweet (and easy) commenting system. Try out the comments below!