Posts

We've already hinted that Ode uses the filesystem as a content database, which of course is different than saying that there is no content database. Decades worth of effort speak to the effectiveness of filesystems at storing and organizing files and the data they contain. Modern filesystems are made to handle the rigors and requirements of modern operating systems and include numerous features designed to ensure the scalability, security, integrity, and availability of data. That's good enough for me.

Sure a filesystem is different than a relational database and we need to take advantage of its strengths rather than railing against its limitations. For example, filesystems are strongly hierarchical so we should take advantage of that organization.

Posts are organized hierarchically according to a topic-based categorization scheme. For example, the root of the weblog may contain any number of folders, which are categories, such as 'Technology', 'Politics', 'Music', 'School', etc. Each of these categories may contain any number of posts as well as subcategories (i.e. subdirectories). For example, 'School' may contain subdirectories for each of a number of different courses. Within each of these subcategories there may be more posts and additional categories.

As long as we are willing to organize posts hierarchically the advantages of using the file system as content database are numerous.

If you know how to manage and organize other types of files then you already know how to manage your Ode site (simple, right?). Even if you're new to computing, the skills you develop working with Ode are applicable to just about everything else you'll do with a computer.

That's just one aspect of simple content management. Here are some others:

Adding, editing, and deleting posts - your operating system's file manager and/or your editor are all you need.

Importing and exporting content - because posts are discrete text files, there are no distinct import/export procedures. With plain-text files you are in great shape to migrate your data to any other platform and if you are using something else now, at the very least you should be able to recover your content as text. You do not need to worry about being locked into Ode or losing access to your data.

Backing up and restoring - your posts are dicrete files which, as far as your operating system and backup routines are concerned, are no different than the other files on your computer. In fact the same thing goes for the rest of your Ode installation (not just your content). You can continue to use whatever backup mechanism you're using now. What's more your site can be backed up and restored incrementally at the level of a single post.

If your're not backing up your files currently, you really should start. In this case Ode doesn't complicate the decision about how to manage it or limit your range of options.

Permissions - Permissions for Ode are governed by the file and folder permissions and access controls dictated by your operating system. There's nothing special that you need to be conerned about. Even if you're not comfortable with permissions, for the vast majority of installations a simple permissions 'recipe', i.e. a straightforward set of rules is all you need. (See the documentation for more info.)

Interacting with a remote server - This is no more complicated than file transfer. Use sFTP/SSH/WebDAV/HTTP or any other file sharing protocol that works for you/your hosting provider/your environment.

File synchronization - Let's say that you want to run an instance of Ode locally on a laptop and also run a publically available server with the same content. For those times when you have your laptop but no internet access, you'd like to be able to create and edit posts locally. At other times, you may not have your laptop but you do have access to the internet from some other computer. You'd like to be able to sync the local and public sites.

This is the sort of thing that is very difficult to do with other packages and trivial with Ode. Taking advantage of best in class file synchonization utilities for your platform, you have the ability to mirror changes in either direction.

Well, that's probably enough of the simple content management shtick and there is so much more to discuss. Before moving on I want to point out that simple content management does not mean stupid content management. As simple as it is, we can do some clever things with Ode. Some examples:

In addition to the hierarchical categorization scheme that results naturally from the organization of files and directories, Ode is capable of interpreting date based requests.

For example:

(put in a table) sample.net/weblog/2007/ All posts created in 2007 sample.net/weblog/2007/01/ Posts from January 2007 sample.net/weblog/2007/01/02/ Only those posts dated January 2nd.

What's more we can combine the date and categorization schemes to limit posts in a given category by date, e.g.:

(put in a table) sample.net/weblog/Technology/Apple/MacOSX/2007/01/ Only posts in the MacOSX category created in January of 2007.

This scheme, which is ideal for date-based navigation and browsing, is built into Ode. Other schemes can be implemented using Ode's addin architecture. (More about addins later.)

Furthermore these date-based 'paths' make for perfect permalinks allowing you to reorganize your site at will without breaking links or violating one of the key tenants of the web, namely 'Cool URIs don't change'.

But that's not all. Because Ode sites are organized hierarchically (by date or category) they play nicely with search engines like Google. Just as simple posting means that we can write more efficiently, simple content management means that what we write can be shared and discovered by others more efficiently.

But we still haven't extracted all of the simple goodness.

Simple content management, in combination with Ode's themes, allows us to syndicate the entire site and every category separately. Maybe one of our visitors is interested in everything we write and another only in what we have to say about 'Technology', or just 'Technology/Apple'. Ode has the flexibility to do that, and without requiring that we make any special arrangements.

Next (Simple Themes)