Blogging Sueblimely

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Guest Post by Ben Barden creator of Injader

In the 10 years I’ve been online, I’ve used a lot of software, some of it good, some not so good. Every now and again I come across a system that seems to be offering something totally different from its original focus - and I ask, “it used to do this, didn’t it?” Straying from your original focus is a dangerous thing to do - you lose touch with the people who were interested in you in the first place.

All systems have their benefits and drawbacks, along with their conventions and quirks. Some of these systems are extremely complex, but they do pretty much everything you could ever want. From being in the business for so long, the providers of these products know their stuff, right?

But then there are people who start asking for more and more from a system, and the software vendor gets worried. If they don’t give the customers what they want, will they move to another system? So they add more and more features, not daring to say “no” if something doesn’t fit with the product.

The product slowly becomes more and more bloated, it might be more prone to issues, and the vendor starts to lose sight of who they are focusing on. Who is their target audience? For instance, if you want a decent message board, are you really going to start with a blogging system? Maybe it’s good for existing users of that system, but one system can’t do everything. That’s why other systems exist!

Would you blog about every topic under the sun?

Think about how you run your blog. If you’re an authority in your niche, chances are you’ve established yourself as a writer of a particular type of content. It’s hard enough to get your blog noticed without trying to write about anything and everything, right?

So when a system comes along that has a clear focus right from the start and doesn’t plan to make a sudden shift away from that focus, is it fair to say that system has a good chance of delivering something really special?

Bend it, break it

WordPress is a very popular choice for blogging, and I don’t doubt it’s a great blogging platform. The problems occur when you try to bend it to do what it wasn’t originally intended for. Sites with a complex hierarchy of content, a photo gallery or a forum can all be created with WordPress, but how easy is it to do?

Technically speaking, WordPress is a content management system, but it was created with the blogger in mind. That’s OK. Simple blogs are not going to run into major difficulties here. If you want a more complex site, that’s when I believe there’s a case for Injader - an open source content management system that I’ve been working on for three years.

Less of the jargon

I maintain a “blogging tips” blog but instead of littering my posts with endless jargon, I take a moment to explain what all the jargon means. Actually, I try to do the same in Injader - it’s the system from the technical guy who tries to write without a lot of jargon. Bit of a mouthful, but it’s quite a unique selling point.

My website also contains my music, my photos, along with some tutorials and a carefully organised Blogging Guide to help beginners get started in the blogging world. Trying to shoehorn those into WordPress is probably doable, but I’m not convinced the solution would be particularly elegant. With Injader, I can do all of this with ease.

Sure, some WordPress plugins are great, but the other day my wife installed a plugin for someone just to change the “reply address” on the contact form. That’s ridiculous. One plugin for that? No offence to the plugin author, at least people have the option to do this now, but this is the kind of thing that shouldn’t be a plugin at all.

Who is Injader aimed at?

Anyone who wants to do more with their blog but doesn’t want to install loads of plugins for basic functionality. Anyone who’s sick of having problems with their themes when they upgrade. Anyone who wants to upgrade their site with ease. You may still have to upload files via FTP, but it’s faster and easier to upgrade Injader than it is to upgrade WordPress.

One thing to remember

No system is perfect. If there’s something you don’t like about Injader, or there’s something it doesn’t do yet, please take a moment to let me know. There’s a contact form at Injader.com where you can send your feedback. I do listen to all feedback, and the vast majority of upcoming changes are based on comments from existing users, rather than my own personal wants and needs.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to see some more people trying out Injader!

Footnote by Sueblimely - Thanks for agreeing to this guest post Ben. I wish now I had used Injader instead of constantly breaking Wordpress in my attempts to use it as a more advanced CMS system than my almost non-existent PHP coding skills allow for.

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