Patrick FoleyApr 27, 2024
Anil Dash
One of the great curses in technology is that, if you’ve ever built a content management system, especially a blogging tool, you can never stop building better ones in your head, even though the actual products in reality never get any better. Here @mathowie falls down the rabbit hole again. https://a.wholelottanothing.org/a-blueprint-of-my-dream-blogging-cms/
Ideas for my dream blogging CMS

Ever since I changed over from Wordpress to Ghost to power this site, I've gotten emails and replies asking me if Ghost is really good and worth making the jump from any other blogging engines. My answer is this: it's currently the least bad one out there, but it is

A Whole Lotta Nothing
Apr 26, 2024 at 12:41pmWeb
Show threadEric McCorkleApr 26, 2024
@anildash @mathowie shipwright's disease. I know it well.
Show threadPaul CampbellApr 26, 2024
@anildash @mathowie — Literally doing this.
Show threadGrant StephensApr 26, 2024
@anildash @mathowie I don't think it is limited to a CMS. I think I've only ever seen one project where they archived the code and said they would not be making any more changes because it was feature complete.
Show threadjulianApr 26, 2024
@[email protected] it's worth pointing out that both @[email protected] and @[email protected] are active on the fediverse, and it would be absolutely wild if — using ActivityPub — you could post to one blog and have it replicated on another blog automatically as a guest post with linkback to the source.
Show threadesmevane, sorryApr 26, 2024
@anildash @mathowie 14 years of trying over and over again here 🥲
Show threadFeralRobotsApr 26, 2024
@anildash @mathowie
man do I ever hate, hate, HATE adaptive UIs. I have used many & have yet to see one that didn't make things harder for me on the average, vs making things easier on one task maybe 30% of the time. The added cognitive load of trying to figure out where the feature I wanted has gone just leaves me irritated until I sigh & accept it as unchangeable. But I never like it.
Show threadFeralRobotsApr 26, 2024
@anildash @mathowie
...THAT HAVING BEEN SAID, of the CMS i've worked with the one that comes CLOSEST to BEING ABLE TO* fit these requirements is Drupal 7** [& potentially its fork, Backdrop, which I haven't used].
But D7/Backdrop have very little mindshare at this point.
_
*You'd have to customize the hell out of it, but it's designed for that.
**D8 is an utter disaster as anything but a corporate-scope tool. D7 can still run well on commodity hosting & can be implemented with basic skills.
Show threadesmevane, sorryApr 26, 2024
@FeralRobots @anildash @mathowie I’m suddenly really curious about this. What are some bad examples? Do they make it tough to understand across the board or are they just easy to goof up? (And like, are there just cases where rent seekers in the org are “driving engagement” or whatever nonsense, or are there cases where it isn’t just an enshittified ui?)
Show threadFeralRobotsApr 26, 2024
@ironchamber @anildash @mathowie
OTOMH, the way sharing works in Android, I never know where I'm going to find the target for my share, because Android keeps resorting based on how it conceptualizes 'recency.'
I've also tried out adaptive UIs in several desktop apps over the years - bad-penny pattern there is pruning elements from the menu structures if they're not used within some period of time. (Word did this at one point, IIRC, but I've used others.)
Show threadFeralRobotsApr 26, 2024
@ironchamber @anildash @mathowie
There was actually a fair body of ergonomics research on this, but the literature I'm familiar with is pre-web. I'd have to look up for specifics (I still have that ergonomics topics reader from school) but my recollection is that they worked OK for a small set of users with very narrow needs, but were a major detriment to power users. IIRC there was speculation that it would also tend to narrow the options that were used through a negative feedback loop.
Show threadesmevane, sorryApr 26, 2024
@FeralRobots @anildash @mathowie “Major detriment to power users” seems like enough of a problem on its own. I’ll have to dig for that research at some point. Would it be under “adaptive interfaces” or something like that?
Show threadFeralRobotsApr 26, 2024
@ironchamber @anildash @mathowie
What I read in school (early 90s) focused mostly on menu systems for applications; hypertext usability wasnt a big thing yet. But now that I think of it there've been Nielsen-Norman Group articles over the years. They're AI shills now but for a long time there was solid stuff in there, even if one had to adjust some for Jakob's massive ego.
Show threadesmevane, sorryApr 26, 2024
@FeralRobots @anildash @mathowie thanks! That seems like a really solid lead, I appreciate it
Show threadesmevane, sorryApr 26, 2024
@FeralRobots @anildash @mathowie oh yeah, I get real annoyed with the sharing menus in iOS as well, same problem. That’s a great example. “Timing out” interactive stuff after a while feels bad too. I guess I was only thinking about stuff surfacing in an empty space gradually, didn’t think about stuff vanishing or reordering unexpectedly
Show threadKevin MarksApr 26, 2024
@anildash @mathowie on the "decide what is sent where" front, have a look at brid.gy
Show threadesmevane, sorryApr 26, 2024
@anildash @mathowie the adaptive ui and the microblog core are both killer observations, really cool to imagine a distributable post engine that works like that
Show threadMatthew HaugheyApr 26, 2024
@anildash on the ShopTalk podcast where we discussed the post for an hour, at one point I just said that basically I want MovableType from 2005 but with a few more features
Show threadJeff CraigApr 26, 2024
@mathowie @anildash And preferably not written in Perl5
Show threadAsbjørn UlsbergApr 29, 2024
@foxxtrot @mathowie @anildash
Show threadScott YoshinagaApr 26, 2024
@anildash what are you currently using for your CMS? BTW I almost got to meet you when I was visiting SixApart in SF wayyy back when… you were in a meeting in someone's office.
Show threadAnil DashApr 26, 2024
@kimonostereo I’ve been using @eleventy on @glitchdotcom and I love it. I can just write when I wanna write, and there’s fun easy stuff to tinker with when I wanna do that.
Show threadScott YoshinagaApr 26, 2024
@anildash Thank you for sharing! I really need to look at Eleventy. I've been looking at options as it's getting quite expensive to stick with Movable Type.
Show threadBob MonsourApr 27, 2024
@kimonostereo @anildash If you're ever looking to see what others are doing with #11ty, I built a site with more than 1,000 blog posts covering a lot of ground. https://11tybundle.dev/
The 11ty Bundle

Your curated source for discovering how the community is using 11ty, a simple, flexible, open-source static site generator. With loads of resources: 1687 blog posts from 497 authors across 53 categories, 36 starter projects, and much more.

Show threadGaëtan PerraultApr 27, 2024

@anildash @mathowie

Honestly, reading through this post, this actually feels like something more than a CMS.

This isn't just "management of content". This is an entire distribution pipeline. We have tools like this, see Hootsuite.

Maybe the world could use an OSS Hootsuite Alternative. I'm not sure, I don't post that much. But the moment you start metaprogramming your hosting tool to cross post to other hosting tools, you're now just building a new thing.

Show threadSamApr 28, 2024
@anildash @mathowie this is so true. I am 20 years into Wordpress and always tempted by new hotness. Then I think is it worth trashing all that knowledge and will it actually make anything any better? I have yet to have a decent idea I can’t implement in WP. No hate on other systems. If I started today I would almost certainly go with something newer.