Smarterware

How to Soup Up Your WordPress Installation
September 23rd, 2009, 5 comments

Since I'm still jazzed about my recent adventures in WP hacking, over at Lifehacker this morning I wrote up a piece on how to make WordPress yours with a few of my picks for best plug-ins and advice for customizing your theme.

Should You or Shouldn’t You Host Your Own Webapps
September 21st, 2009, 13 comments

One of the smartest people I've ever met, Maciej Cegłowski, says you shouldn't self-host web-based software like WordPress or Fever or eventually, Google Wave, because it requires you to "devote half your life to learning and understanding [server] administration." Go with a hosted service or generate flat HTML files of your blog posts that you upload to your server automatically instead, he says. While Maciej's argument may apply to some (ok, most?) folks, I disagree: When it comes to a project you care passionately about, doing it yourself is much more educational and satisfying (and won't take half your life). Sure, most people should just buy instead of build, but they'll never get something that's exactly what they want and unlike any other.