Seeing as I develop websites all day every day for clients, it seems natural that when I come to develop my own, I'd be looking to show off all of my tricks.
But when we started looking at developing a new blue hat (my web development company) website and decided that we should make use of the newer ideas on the web - blogging, podcasting etc a sudden realisation dawned upon us. This stuff is all readily available on the web. Google, amoungst many others, offer a comprehensive blogging piece of software. So, I ask, by using Google's software is a web developer wimping out. Perhaps this is missing out on a opportunity to develop a new piece of code (and demonstrate skills) or does this show that a web developer is making the best use of something that is already perfectly good (not broke so don't fix).
Personally, I think we should be concentrating on making the things that aren't readiliy available and if something is there, meets the requirements and can be used inexpensively (or for free in this case) then we use it.
In an hour, I'd setup my blog, posted and published my first article and was happily sending links to my friends. It was a lot quicker than building it myself and has enough flexibiliy to accommodate any design that I want to put to it. It will integrate directly into the newly developed website when that is ready to go online.
Labels: blogging, free software, web developer