In my last posts I mentioned that I was evaluating some editors. Again. The basic problem is that I just cannot stand vims modal editing and look & feel, even AquaMacs does not change this. Sadly I also cannot stand the alternatives. Till now. I think I found an editor I really can live with. It was suggested by some people I know but I did not get why they like it. Now after using the new beta for some time I think I am converted.

First let us talk about features. Why did I even bother trying IDEs like Eclipse when I actually do not like those bloated pieces of ... well, do not get me started. I prefer an editor. It is fast, I do not need to create projects and other stuff, do not have to care about anything beside my code.

But I tried an IDE. I have seen this fancy features like showing all your methods, listing files, jumping from file to file in your project,... They have a great strategy - they show you all the shiny stuff and hide the fact that it is still an IDE and just sucks.

So what features should my editor have to compete with an IDE?

• code completion
• easy jumping between files
• split view
• project view - showing all files in a folder
• syntax highlighting for everything I work with
• spell checking
• git / gist integration
• keyboard navigation

I still believe that I do not ask for too much. But sadly the only editor that is actively developed and provides all those features was vim.

And maybe the most important point. I love beautiful things. I work much better when I am surrounded and use stuff I enjoy using. Guess why I prefer Macs,...

I am not alone

Looking at all those emerging projects I am not the only one who wants all those features and cares about stuff like split views. But those projects are either really new and still in the first beta - and I have seen how dead a great project can be even when in development. I am looking at you Intype. - or they are not as actively developed as I prefer it. Textmate, anyone?

So it is possible that those editors will some day be a great alternative and that I will pay 40€ for a piece of software I will only use for some months or a year. Even if the other editors also cost some money. I make my living with IT. And it is never wasted investing in stuff that makes your life easier, provides productivity or just helps you getting the job done.

Workflow

I admit that I use a mouse. Or a touchpad to be honest. I can remember key bindings and I also use those but for some tasks I work faster when I just move my hand away from the keyboard and click on stuff. Having a project folder on a side of your project, browsing the structure, creating and deleting folders and files just helps me a lot to work faster. I do not have to switch to another window or command line I just do one or two clicks. So a project drawer or filesystem explorer is essential. This does not mean that I do not want to be able to navigate with my keyboard. More on this topic in a few minutes.

Code completion is tricky. Sometimes it saves you a lot of typing. And when it is even able to show you a documentation about methods you are using you save a lot of time browsing documentations or trying to figure out why your arguments will not work. This is not a must have but a nice to have feature.

When you never used an editor that is capable of split views I suggest you immediately download one. An easy example would be working on a homepage. I have 2 windows open. A browser to preview my work and an editor with 2 views. In one view I have my html file and in the other one my css file. Just switching the view without the trouble of placing editors side by side helps a lot keeping all those tags in the right order when working on your css files.

Command-T or from now on Command-P is awesome. You press the keys, start typing and just have a list of files that contain what you just type. One additional keystroke and you have the file open with your cursor at the method you were looking for. Fast, efficient, a pleasure to work.

Since I switched to Zenbo I use my editor to write blog posts. I am definitely not the best writer the world has ever seen. My grammar is not as beautiful as it could be, sometimes I make stupid mistakes and have to look up words in a dictionary. Spell checking is essential. I am working on it but I think there will always be some words I have to look up or need a correction since English is not my native language.

I use git for every project and every piece of code I write. But I always were a bit skeptical using plugins that integrate it with my editor or IDE. Currently it looks like the git plugin works fine and is a nice to have feature. We will see how it works out.

You only know you want it when you try it

There are some features in my new editor I started using and enjoying in a blink of an eye. I heard many rumors on Twitter and read some blog posts how great those are but never thought that I would use them.

One of those features is "distraction free". You basically tell you editor that you want to see nothing beside him. A dark background and only one text field to input your text or code. I would not use this feature to write code but it is a pleasure to use it while writing blog posts. And I will also give it a chance when I continue working on my first book.

There is an integrated package manager helping you to install plugins. It is a nice feature to have an integrated search. I had no problem using the script search on vim.org but if I can have a shortcut I will not hesitate using it.

Having snippet and theme support that is actually easy to use and edit is also really nice. No obscure paths to remember once a year you have to add or edit something is nice.

I guess I will,...

For those of you who cannot guess it yet I am talking about Sublime Text. I will continue using it for my current project which consists of some webdesign and Django development. I will write some more posts and work on Zenbo. If Sublime turns out to be what I want I am going to buy it.

But there are some alternatives I also consider if there are some problems. There is Kod, Espresso, Tincta and Vico.

For my next project that is an iPhone application I will stick to XCode. It is another workflow and another kind of project. Integrated interface builders and stuff are also a pleasure. But this will be part of another post. If you are looking for an editor I only have one suggestion: try them all and use what fits your workflow and project best - do not trust people like me telling you why it is great. Experience it first hand.

Hello and welcome to a new part of the famous, loved and anticipated series about object-oriented programming. Today we will be talking about objects, methods, functions and get a basic understanding what happens when we use them.

I was not sure if I should start with this because we still lack some basic understanding what variables are, but I think we will be doing fine. Let us take a look at the code we use today.

EDIT: I just see that GitHub does not include line numbers I will have to add a way to highlight code by myself for hopelesscom. Just click on the link to GitHub to see line numbers

Looks pretty simple, doesn't it? What do we have in this code?

• a class IchObjekt with two variables and three methods
• our main program with two methods

We could also create two files, one for each class. When we are writing larger programs and classes this would be the preferred way to do it. But since we only got some lines of code this works fine.

What is a class and an object

You can think of a class as a template for a number of things. Let us look at a human, for example. A human has hair, well most of them, and a hair color. The fact that humans have hair is a fact, the hair color varies from being to being.

Those "things" are called objects (humans). When you create an object from a class you can also say instance (please remember that we are currently not 100% accurate with this).

We create an object from the class in line 28. Each object created from one class has the same variables and methods but they can contain different values.

class and instance variables

We will be talking about variables in another post. But to understand the concept of classes and objects I will give you a basic idea about the different types. This is not the final explanation and will sound a lot different later on but for now it is okay.

In line 2 and 3 we declare class variables. When you create an object and set a variable the variable is different from the class variable. From this point you call it object or instance variable.

Back to humans: That they have_hair (because they all do) would be an class variable, the hair color an object variable since it is different for each object. In a later post we will clarify how to call it and what the real difference is. For now we will stick to this explanation.

methods and functions

They are basically the same thing. A piece of code, if coded well, doing one thing that can be called multiple times. So you write your code one time and execute it - maybe - many times.

In Java everything is part of an object. Every function is called method. Why? When a function is part of an object it is called method. This is the basic difference. That was the hard part,... ;)

To execute a block of code aka method you have to call the method. We do this in line 30 for example. The way you do it is always the same: object.method(arguments). If the method should return something you have to tell Java where the return value should be stored. You need a variable of the type matching the return value. The variable that should hold the return value stand on the left side of the = and the call on the right side. Look at the lines 20 to 26.

public and private

A method is either public or private. If it is public you can always call it from everywhere.

If it is private you can only call it from the object itself. If we would have a private method in the class IchObjekt you could only call it from one of the methods in IchObjekt not from lesson2.

return values

If a method is returning nothing it is void. All methods in our IchObjekt class return nothing so they are all of the type void.

In line 20 we have brauchEineZahl which is supposed to return a number - an integer - so the method needs to know that it should return something from the type int. If you tell a method it should return something you absolutely have to do it.

static

Sometimes you want to call methods without creating an object from a class. If you have a class that is doing basic math stuff there is no need to have objects of this class. You just created them to put some of your code in another files so it is reusable and looks better.

For those methods you use the modifier static. Our main method is always static because we do not create an object before calling it. The same goes for the brauchEineZahl. There is no object so the method has to be static.

Constructor

When you create a new object there is always a method called constructor executed. No matter if you wrote one or not. In our example our constructor starts at line 5. It always has the same name as the class.

Arguments

In line 5 we tell our constructor that it will get an argument when it is called. If you would create and object without giving the constructor an argument - see line 28 - Java would complain like a little child that "it wants it so badly and refuses to do anything before it gets one".

You can specify any number of arguments and they can be from any type you want. Just make sure you follow the argument order when calling the function. If the function expects an integer and a string and you call it supplying a string and an integer it will start complaining again.

As you can see in line 28 and 32 it does not matter if you pass the content from a variable or just add the value directly, which is kind of pointless in a real program, the only thing that matters is that the type is right. The variables also do not need to have the same name.

How to build a method

First we should think about our method and what it is supposed to do.

• is it bound to an object
• what should it return
• is it public or private
• what arguments do I need

When we know all these things we can use what we just learned. You always build a method the same way.

keywords name ( arguments )

Keywords are public/private, static, return type. Always follow this order. Do not change it. Seriously, I mean it - changing the order is like typing Google into Google - you will break the internet. (Cookies for everyone who knows that this is a quote from IT Crowd)

You need a name for your method - you and Java should both know how to call this block of code.

Arguments are sometimes needed. Check the types and the order.

Remember to always put your code in { } and remember that you need a return statement when you used something else than void.

Quick summary

Classes describe a number of variables and functions for objects you build of them.

You can use methods to run the same code again and again or to change or extend objects beyond variables. Methods need keywords to know what they are actually supposed to do.

Java has many things in common with little, spoiled kids.

German

As usual a short translation of everything that is important.

• method + function = frei Übersetzt: Unterprogramm
• argument = Argument
• keyword = Schlüsselworte / Bezeichner
• constructor = Konstruktor

Today we will be learning the basics of object-oriented programming. As I mentioned in the introduction post to this series we have to make sure that we know the basic ideas and words that describe them.

Java, Gists and Eclipse

We will be using Java examples. You can download the examples clicking on the "raw" link at the bottom and comment on them or add something on my GitHub Gist page. Do not get stuck with Git, Gists or what this is - go along with the fact that the code examples are hosted there. If you enable JavaScript for this domain you will also see them embedded in this post.

Before we start let me say two things. I know that many people use an IDE like Eclipse or NetBeans for Java development. For the sake of understanding what happens I will just use an ordinary editor and the command line in this post. Well, I always use those - this does not mean that you should too. If you are comfortable with Eclipse just read the post, understand what it is doing and everything is fine. You just have to figure out how to create a project and add the code by yourself.

Now would be a good time, if you have not already, to visit Oracle and get the latest JDK. Currently Java SE 7u2. I skip the hint that you should also install it...

Our first code

Let us take a look at the first few lines of code we will be using for this example. The code is not perfect. And this has a good reasons. We will use the knowledge we are gaining to make this code better.

Really simple, isn't it?

Compile & Execute

This is Java specific, but you should now it, so you can work with all the following examples. For everyone that is not forced to use Java: "Sorry - I know it sucks, but stop complaining and play nicely with the rest of us."

There are two stages. First you compile your code to byte code using

javac lesson1.java

This will generate a file called lesson1.class. We can run our program using the JVM (Java Virtual Machine)

java lesson1

No you do not add a file extension. As I said in the first post, sometimes stuff will be a bit vague. But this is totally fine, you do not need to know Java internals to understand OOP and how it is working. If you ever wanted to know what happens when you hit the green "play" button in Eclipse - now you do.

Structure

As you can clearly see there is a class called lesson1. The name of this class is what you use when you execute your program. Even if you name the file lesson2, javac will create a lesson1.class file.

Every time you run java something the JVM is looking for a method called main in something.class. It will start executing stuff you put in there. Always add the keywords public static void and add String args[] as expected argument.

Doing stuff

We print something to the console. But how does Java now what System.out.println should do? There is an easy and a correct explanation. I think we should go with the easy one since it is accurate enough, not confusing and with some exceptions a common definition.

Every time you write a program a set of predefined classes and methods are automatically added. You do not have to import them or tell the compiler and runtime (JVM) where they are. They are just there and you can use them.

Comments

Most of the time people will tell you to comment your code. Sometimes they are right sometimes they are just idiots. You have to think what you are commenting.

Adding a comment that tells everyone that this is the main method is pretty useless. Everyone looking at your code already knows this.

Adding comments to explain complex procedures, algorithms or give people a quick idea what your method is actually doing is a good idea.

Methods are a complex thing when talking about comments. If you just wrote one that only prints an argument to the screen you do not need comments. On the other hand if you connect to a database, delete 5 rows and close the connection a short comment would be a good idea.

The difference between those two comment styles is simply explained. If you use // everything till the end of the line is a comment. If you use /* everything till */ is a comment. No matter how many lines are included.

Quick summary

There are classes, methods, some of them that are magically available, no matter if you do something or not and there are comments that tend to be problematic when two programmers discuss how important and verbose you should be.

In the next post we will learn how to place {}, why there is public, static, void, what it means and why methods are no functions.

German

As usual a short translation of everything that is important.

• class = Klasse
• method = Methode (Unterprogramm)
• argument = Argument(e)
• comment = Kommentare

I have spent some time this weekend explaining Java - well to be more precise a Java problem - to my precious one and her class mate. There was one problem the whole five hours I am trying to solve the 2.0 way.

Learning Java without some basic knowledge is a pain. I decided to write a series of posts to explain basic OOP (object-oriented programming) concepts and show some examples in Java.

We are all from Germany and their teacher is for an unknown reason using german words in class so I will add a translation to all important words

Why the .... Java?!

Most examples will be written in Java and sometimes I will compare Java to Python or something else to show the differences and the similarities. I am no Java fan even if I use it from time to time but they are forced to work with it. If you are trying to gain some ground in OOP Java is not the worst choice - well this is the only thing I can imagine where Java is not the worst one so "yay Java, you made it!".

From Zero to something slightly above

This will not be you first and only source you ever need to become a Java master. If you are already using it you are likely only reading my series to flame me for some vague terms or the fact that I disagree with some design principles.

If you are not sure about all this OOP stuff, if you want to learn the basics and if you are looking for a "reference card" to look up some words this will be perfect for you. All, well let us call them lessons because we could learn something, lessons will be as short and precise as possible.

A good example are functions and methods. Even if they are basically the same they are two different things if you look at them. Since new words can be confusing and there is already a lot to remember it could be possible that we just call a function method even if it is not part of a class. Just to give you an example what I mean when I am talking about vague terms.

Now what?!

I am currently building an invoice system and I think it is a good example to explain some OOP concepts. You know, creating a list of invoices, sorting them and stuff like that.

In the next few posts we will learn some vocabulary. This is essential if you want to read and understand code, books, tutorials and maybe, some day write a piece of code.

When we know what we are talking about we will look at the basic structure and start building our own little invoice system. By the way, it will not be ready for production use so stop dialing the number of the marketing agency.

What did we learn?

• Object-oriented programming will from now on be remembered as OOP (yeah, I am lazy)
• methods and functions are not the same but you will to a certain point think they are

Even if you do not need a crash course in OOP and Java, I hope you will at least have some fun with this series.

German

• methods & functions = Unterprogramme

I do not know if you ever founded a business or a start up. If you have not I suggest that you take some time, think of something cool you really love and start one. It is fun. It is exciting. It is on of the reasons why I had so much fun and work the last few days.

Beside some problems with moving and founding a business everything went really smooth. The only real problem is that our fiscal authorities are sticking to some wired and stupid rules. I moved in my new flat in October 2010. I am not added to the fiscal authorities files till now. Without any note that I really live here they cannot hand out everything I need to write invoices.

After some days I have some clients, nearly finished my first two jobs and I believe that this will be a lot of fun.

Hopelesscom

I am currently working on some design improvements. Especially the archive page. Currently it is just a list but in the next few days there will be some visible changes.

There also is a good chance that there will be a way to improve the URLs. I managed to create a rewrite rule that allows me to use tld/foo/ URLs that are rewritten to foo.html

Zenbo

I now have two more projects using Zenbo and I did not need to add or remove features. The initial version is just great and helps building every kind of page.

Social Web

I took a few minutes to decide what social networks I will use to build a community around my new business. I will stick to Twitter, Facebook, Xing, Linked In and Google+.

Creating all profiles, filling in the most important data and managing to stay out of the sight from people that know you is not easy. I want a big start with everything going live together and this would not be possible if people start talking about it now.

I think I will stick with Facebook as primary platform and just link to updates from other sites. Currently Facebook seems like the only real option if you want to build a community. There are the most users, you are flexible and you are free how to add it to your page.

Next few days

I will be on vacation from Friday to Monday or Tuesday. Just a few days without work, without anything beside fun and my (maybe little bit grumpy) girlfriend... Do you know those times when you hope that your girl is not reading your blog?

Yesterday I took some time to compile a short list of features I am implementing in Zenbo the next few days. I have a big list what Zenbo should be able to do when I release version one and even a list for version two. Zenbo will be used for two new projects so the features needed for those have priority.

Syntax Highlighting

This is one of the features I really want for Hopelesscom. Writing posts about python, coding and sometimes stuff that involves the command line without syntax highlighting just sucks.

Currently I have some problems filtering the 'code' tags but that is just because I have not used regex for some time.

I believe that pygments 'guess_lexer' should be fine but there is a chance that it will sometimes fail. Adding a mark what language should be used is not the worst idea I had while implementing everything.

Crawler

After generating a page there should be three things happening.

• checking every link if there is a file in the right folder
• deploying the page
• checking every link if it works

I see some performance issues with this one. Crawling a large page two times could take some time. I am not sure if I will just check the links before deploying since I do not believe that there can or will be issues with broken links or files after uploading the site.

Okay I know that this sentences sounds really stupid and that I will now run in some deployment issues the next few days,...

Wordpress Importer

I really want to migrate my business blog (german only) to Zenbo. There is currently no archive on hopelesscom since I want to merge the past three ones together. But on my other blog I want to continue writing without anyone noticing - beside the new layout.

Exporting to an XML file is no problem but sadly there are some characters that would need a definition. minidom and pyxml throw an exception while loading the file.

I am not sure if I should write a definition, just replace the parts that do not work or look for another option to parse the file. I fear that this will take some time.

Tags

Before migration my other blog I want a plugin for tags and / or categories. And I want a beautiful one not just one file for every tag.

The idea is one file with a page name, url, all tags and some JavaScript magic.

If you are using and working with the web for more than 6 or 7 years you could remember the time when JavaScript just plainly sucked. Every browser implemented it another way, most of the time it did nothing useful that improved the usability experience and it just did not work. Times luckily changed.

Git Flow

I am looking into the option to change my workflow a little bit. Git Flow implementing an easy way for Vincent Driessen's branching model. If you do not know what I am talking about take a look at Jeff Kreeftmeijer's post.

I had some problems with branching and merging and I do not know why I ran into them. But the main point is that git flow would force and assist me to have a clean repository structure. There are far worser things.

Vim vs. TextWrangler

I have to admit: I switched back to vim. I still like TextWrangler for writing posts but I just cannot stand coding with it. I do not know if I just miss modal editing, if I miss the customization or if I am just used to FuF and other stuff I used for years now.

But coming home to vim just felt natural again. I still do not believe that modal editing is the best thing since sliced bread but I can stand it.

A new year is always fun. I do not really count to the group of people that always think about new stuff to do because a date changed or that try to make live-changing decisions and always brag how they will change. But I have some plans for this year.

The first and most important one is that I will start a new business. I will not close my old one but run them side by side. There will be a long post explaining what I will be doing, but this takes some more days till everything is set. Short preview: I am back - doing IT things.

Beside that I will be traveling a bit more - well at least I think I will but that depends on my precious one.

I also try to accomplish two new things. Learn a new language. The race is close but I think I will learn how to communicate with the most arrogant, ignorant and most hated people I have ever met. France,...

Beside that I will finally get a new 'E'-string for my guitar and play from time to time. This will be lowest priority since my business will take most of my time.

Have Fun

I hope you all have a great year, a lot of fun, accomplish your goals and just stay as awesome as you are now.

I wish you all happy holidays. Have a great time with your family or the things you enjoy. Maybe you even have some spare time and start working on an amazing project.

Just be as awesome as always :)

I think everyone who has something to do with programming, system administration or is reading IT related message boards at least encountered one flamewar about editors. Most people who do not belong in this category do not understand why everyone is going crazy about an editor. But they also do not spend many hours a week using one and trying to be productive. While developing Zenbo I was using vim. As I did the last 12 years. I currently use TextWrangler to write my blog posts. In an earlier post I mentioned that I will try to replace vim with TextWrangler. What do I expect from an editor I use for development and writing?

• syntax highlighting
• file system explorer or "Command-T"
• using the spelling correction build into OSX
• tab-to-space
• free (as in beer)
• usability

Nice to have would be

• snippets
• Tag navigation
• auto completion
• split windows

I do not believe this is too much I ask for but I did not find one editor that really fits my needs. Writing one by myself is also no option. This would take time and resources I currently do not have and I am not willing to reinvent the wheel.

Vim

I currently use MacVim and at least it does not look as bad as vim or gvim. But the limitations are the same. I never was a friend of modal editing. I know some of you may now hate me but it is just a fact that it feels unusual. And beside that I am a mouse user. I use this little grey thing for years now and I like it. It works. It feels more natural for me than remembering letters to do basic stuff.

Beside modal editing that really is against my usability wishes, I also do not like the fact that even MacVim is just another port of an *nix application. Text file configuration, long manpages,... not my world anymore.

Command-T

If you know TextMate you should know what I am talking about. Hitting Command-T and you can just start typing a file name or even regex based strings and select the file you want from a menu.

If you use vim you can use FuzzyFinder to accomplish the same thing. Using FuF made me disable NERDTree. If I have to use my keyboard to navigate I can use something better than a filesystem explorer.

After I got used to it it really helps my workflow and makes opening files a lot easier. It looks like PeepOpen could help but I would prefer a free solution.

Snippets

I do not care if they are build in or if I have to use a third party application. There are plenty of them offering enough features that I do not think this will be a big problem. Of course, build in support is always nice but not mandatory.

Split Windows

Having two source files open side by side without starting a second editor, perfectly arranged is nice to have sometimes. Of course it takes away your focus from one file and that is also the reason why I do not always use it but it is, as I said, handy sometimes. Most current editors do not seem to support this.

non free editors

TextMate, Sublime Text, BBEdit,.. they would all work to some point. Some of them have a great feature set, some have some features that could be handy but sadly they are all priced above $40. I do not make my living editing code and the update policies to new versions are just ridiculous sometimes. Paying a one time fee would be fine but paying for every upgrade with new features and sometimes needed improvements is just a joke.

Beside that some of them are not really developed at a speed that you get new and needed features in time. Looking at TextMate and how many people stopped using it because Version 2 was promised for years and not developed,... just a bad joke. Also nothing that would justify a fee for updates.

Emacs

If you used vim for years it is likely that you tried Emacs. Sadly even with plugins I do not get what I want and there are some usability and design decisions that make Emacs even more unattractive than vim.

IDEs (Eclipse)

The most used and suggested IDE for everything is Eclipse. Now I do not need a full development environment. I already have tools that work and I do not need some graphical tool compilation trying to hold them together. Beside that I prefer a true native look & feel and fast startup times.

TextWrangler

Currently it looks like TextWrangler will be my best option. Nice look and feel, at least a document drawer, a great OSX integration and some basic tag managing. But it is just an editor. Nothing spectacular. I still need some time to evaluate if syntax highlighting will be okay. But at least, compared to vim, it is stupid easy to change some colors. Looking forward to the next coding session.

Today is the first day with my server running Zenbo. Everything is fine and the only process currently running is Lighttpd. But let us first look at yesterday. This post will mostly be a recapitulation of what happened and what will happen.

Testing Zenbo

I was a bit sceptical if everything will work as expected. I first used a vhost to test everything. While fixing the design I did 23 deploys and I had not one error. So I was pretty sure everything should work well while blogging.

Using the post-receive hook seems pretty solid. After the repo is pushed it is automatically checked out and up to date. What I currently do not know is how long it will take when the repo gets bigger, the load gets higher and if there will be a downtime while the checkout is running.

Nice URLs

I want URLs that do not include a file extensions. Looks and feels wired after all those years that there is an extension again. I already found a rewrite that works but sadly I am not sure how to manage multiple extensions based on conditions.

Having a RSS feed with a .html extension looks as wrong as a CSS file with an .html at the end. Even if it would work it is just not right.

RFC conform dates

The date in an RSS feed should be RFC-822 compatible so it validates. Currently I only add a date on a year-month-day scheme since it is enough for my blog.

Adding hours and minutes should not break my sorting but it could. So I need some time for testing. Well or I just check if the feed works without a valid date.

Editor

I currently use TextWrangler to write this post. I will also try to replace vim with it. After using vim for 12 years now I feel like I should really give something else a fair chance. Again.

404

Definitely need a 404 page. Nothing to add to this point.

Next few weeks

I made up my mind what I will fix next. There will be some improvements in my CSS files and I will add syntax highlighting that actually works. I use pygments and guess the lexer what does not always work as intended. Than there is the plugin system that really wants some love and attention.

But basically after Zenbo is now running I will do the most obvious thing. Blogging. My blog solution works and I am happy that it is released and I also want to add some features but the basic idea behind Zenbo was that blogging should be fun again and no fight against strange Ajax interfaces.

I also do not talk about every feature I will add or what I am currently working on. There is GitHub Issues that holds every idea and a description how far I got.

If you want to add features I suggest you wait till the plugin system is working. There will be some major changes and generators will also become plugins. Filters will stay the same. If you are using Zenbo or start someday drop me a line or add yourself to the GithHub Wiki Page.

Twitter Comments

As a side project I am looking in a way to pull all tweets using a specific hashtag in a local file and load them with every page using JavaScript. Basically a comment system using Twitter.

Instead of a file it is also possible that I will use redis since I fear some performance problems with plain/text files and I am also too lazy to work on anything cache related. Mostly because caches tend to break or mess something up at some point.

But this is nothing that is finished or even in an early alpha stage.

Webserver

I use lighttpd for many years now. Compared to Apache it has enough features, is sometimes faster, easier to configure and has some regex url magic included.

Since it is possible that I will hit more problems with nice looking URLs and rewrites I consider using Apache or Nginx. Load and speed is not really a problem. Especially since they now only have to serve static files - one of the best arguments against Apache as far as I know. And if there will be some load problems in future I can still try to mess around with caching,...

There should be a way to add .htaccess support to Lighttpd. I do not know how stable and well supported it is. But it should solve most problems.

I think I created something that will entertain me for many months and serve me well for - I hope - many years. Somehow I feel a bit satisfied... and thankfully my significant other did not get mad at me for all the hours I talked about it or, well, cursed because something just did not work. Thanks to her I will also have a great logo, so I believe she is not too pissed,... :)