SMF Is OK For Blogging, But WordPress Is Better
June 17th, 2008 by ComputerBob
Even though this is only my second day of doing it, I really like using a blogging tool instead of creating each day’s Journal entry from scratch in XHTML code. Using a blogging tool lets me concentrate on what I want to write without having to worry about this site’s entire file structure and each Journal entry’s underlying code, like I had to do every day for almost the past 5 years up until now.
It’s been very educational to use my SMF forum as a rudimentary blogging tool since yesterday, but I think I’ll be happier in the long-term if I use “the best tool for the job” instead of trying to “make do” with something that works but that isn’t designed for blogging.
So, for all of the reasons that I mentioned in yesterday’s Journal entry, and a few more that I’ve discovered since then, I’m going to try to install and configure WordPress instead of continuing to use my SMF forum as a surrogate blogging tool.
Actually, installing WordPress probably isn’t going to cause me any problems at all. I’ve followed WordPress’s development for the past few years, and even though I’ve never installed it, I have no doubt that I’ll be able to do it without any problems. There are several ways to install WordPress, and I’ve pretty much decided which way I want to do it — hidden in the background — to allow me to get it configured roughly the way I want it before I make it “live” and let it overwrite this site’s normal home page.
Here are some articles that will help me install WordPress the way I want to:
- http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress
- http://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress
- http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/10/01/how-to-move-wordpress-blog-to-new-domain-or-location/
- http://codex.wordpress.org/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory
- http://drothism.com/2007/05/30/run-wordpress-blog-from-root-directory-but-install-to-subdirectory/
Configuring WordPress to look like the rest of my site is the job that might take me some time to accomplish. Since I’ve done that task several times before with forums, galleries, guestbooks and several other types of scripts, I have no doubt that I’ll be able to do it with WordPress, but I’m not quite ready to give it the time and concentration that it will require. Plus, there are a few different methods to do it, and I haven’t decided which method I want to use.
Here are several sites that have information about adding WordPress to an existing web site:
- http://chrisjdavis.org/adding-wordpress-to-an-existing-site
- http://www.shooflydesign.org/buzz/past/embedding_wordpress.html
- http://jonathanwold.com/tutorials/wordpress_integration/
- http://www.jonathanwold.com/tutorials/wordpress_theme/
- http://moshublog.com/2005/07/05/integrate/
- http://codex.wordpress.org/User:Jalenack/Integrating_Wordpress_into_an_Existing_Site
- http://anekostudios.com/2006/09/21/how-to-create-a-wordpress-template-or-theme/
- http://elliottback.com/wp/archives/2004/10/24/wordpress-customization-guide-for-newbies/
- http://dhirajpatra.blogspot.com/2008/06/tutorial-how-to-integrate-wordpress.html
- http://www.wpdesigner.com/2007/02/19/so-you-want-to-create-wordpress-themes-huh/
- http://www.websterinteractive.com/index.php/2008/01/12/wordpress-site-migration/
Once I have WordPress installed and (hopefully) looking the way I want it to look, then I’ll want to enable its Permalinks feature:
I know it would be a long, tedious process, but if I decide to go through my hundreds of previous Journal entries — which each contain 1-7 separate items — and manually convert them into thousands of separate WordPress posts, I’ll probably take this advice:
Anyway, right now, I’m still using my SMF forum as a blogging tool, as I described in yesterday’s Journal entry, I’m typing this as a normal forum post, but because of the way I set it up — which I also described yesterday — it will also automatically display on this site’s home page as today’s Journal entry.
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