Welcome to ManiaRavings new home!

Published on Wednesday, October 17, 2007 in Blogging
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It took several weekends but I have finally pulled it through ! There is so much to talk about this transition and it’s going to be difficult to put it all together considering the constraints of time and space. I am quite happy about how things have progressed over the last few months and I am more excited of my plans of dealing with this blog over the next year.

In this first article on this new location I am going to talk about:

• Some reasons about moving to the new domain
• Choosing ExpressionEngine for a blogging platform
• The new design and colours
• What I plan to post for the next 6 months

Reasons for moving to a .com domain

First, a bit of history ! Last year, I purchased maniar.ca because I thought that it was cool for me to have it. I thought it was a good way to establish myself online and with a Canadian identity and so I signed up for a reasonably priced plan with e-hosting.ca.

Now because this was my very first paid domain, I opted for the cheapest plan they had. It didn’t have all the bells and whistles like an SQL database, PHP or Pearl support but it was just enough to have blog managed by Blogger.com.

But with time and the growth of my blog, I was faced with some limitations of Blogger, in addition to the numerous limitations of my hosting account. I was missing several key features like a good archive page, link pagination and article count and it was because I was unable to get the custom domains feature by Blogger to work. e-hosting.ca’s domain manager failed to save C-names and their tech support was of no help either !

I explored many possible solutions to Blogger - and believe me I did - but none of those solutions would work without SQL and Pearl/PHP. So I decided to wait until my hosting plan expired, thinking that I would make a decision then.

By the end of the summer (of 2007), I realized that upgrading the account with e-hosting.ca was not going to be cheap and I began to look for other hosts. But their total charges were not appealing due to the additional $26 for a .ca domain name. I know its not a lot of money but I really didn’t want to spend that extra. Then I decided that it was time to say goodbye to maniar.ca and go for a cheaper .com domain. (Blog Bloke agrees as well !). Also, it was time to put ManiaRavings inside a domain name.

I conjured up “ManiaRavings” and the tag line when I started the blog on maniar.ca. I like it because it works well and probably also gives a clue to the content of my website. I have also observed that “ManiaRavings” has been more popular and preferred over “maniar.ca” !

I signed up for maniaravings.com after picking a reasonably priced package with A Small Orange. For $35 and up a year, they provide Unlimited SQL, Subdomains, Mail accounts, Scripting and more which I think is very competitive ! If you are shopping for a new host for your website, I recommend you to check out A Small Orange, and when you decide to sign-up, please remember me when asked about a referrer.

Exploring new blogging platforms

With a brand new domain and a great hosting plan in hand, doors were wide open for a newer and better Content Management System.

I tried Word Press, Movable Type and Joomla but customizing their templates was an overkill. Word Press is great for an out of the box blogging solution. Its simple and unsophisticated but not very flexible. I also ended up having way too many plug ins to manage and I really didn’t like the control panel interface.

Movable Type had a better control panel interface but it too had similar issues as Word Press in addition to a 25 MB installation space on my server - which I could not stand ! Joomla was just too rigid and I am not going into any details about that.

I tried a few others like Drupal, Geeklog, Mambo and Typo3, (the installation scripts are provided with CPanel) but I settled for ExpressionEngine because it provides more flexibility, more built-in functionality , more to configure and learn.

ManiaRavings is now ExpressionEngine Core powered

The coolest thing about ExpressionEngine in my opinion is its easy to learn template language. With ExpressionEngine’s template tags, there is minimal coding and no fiddling with any php code, so it saves a lot of time ! One can fine tune everything from header to footer including the RSS and Atom feeds.

I was mostly encouraged to use ExpressionEngine by seeing how it was used on Veerle’s Blog. Her design style remains unmatched and she’s got that eye for detail ! Besides, she’s got a few tutorials on ExpressionEngine which helps.

ExpressionEngine comes in two different flavours. The first is ExpressionEngine, which is a paid version that includes technical support, forums, multiple-website, commerce etc. The second is Expression Engine Core, which does not have some of the features of the paid version, but is ideal for personal weblogs.

A few words about the new minimalist design

I get tired of my designs quickly mainly because I like the challenge of creating new designs and I am always inspired by new websites I visit everyday. But then, a website with frequent design changes does have negative effects on readership !

This time, I put in a lot of time researching what type of layout and colours would appeal visitors as well as myself. I figured that being minimalist with cool colours was the best way to go. I’ve always wanted to try a one column layout and I must say that this time, it works !
The colour combination was picked from kuler by Adobe labs, which you can find by searching for “soft green blue deluxe”.

Where this blog is headed in the next 6 months

Considering that university life is in full swing and I’ll be going through my second set of term tests in two weeks, I am going post mostly personal thoughts and opinions for now. I am not going to port any articles from the old blog but I’ll recycle them and post afresh.

Also to keep things alive, I am thinking of posting one verse from the Qur’an or one short Hadith every week that would help us feel motivated to get things done, wherever we are in life. I am also thinking of keeping you updated on new and interesting posts from some of my favourite blogs.
All in all, I hope that I’ll be able to stick to the schedule and find time to write.

Concluding words

I would compare this transition (moving to a new domain and implementing a new design and plans) to moving into a new house. It sure was a lot of work and there is still some coding and design elements to finish ! If you do find anything broken or have suggestion, drop me a line !

Lastly, I’d like to thank you for your patience and time for going through this lengthy post !

Until next time,

Jaffer

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