from day one, getting back into using blogger, the biggest drawback that i saw was the lack of linking between posts. the posts themselves know who they are, but they don't know what the previous post was, or what the next post is.

so, i had to write something in. i had to hack blogger to make it smart.

<code>
<MainOrArchivePage>
<?php
    <BloggerArchives>
    $all_posts['<$BlogArchiveName$>']='<$BlogArchiveURL$>';
    </BloggerArchives>

    foreach ( $all_posts as $this_key=>$this_post ) {
      if ($this_post==$current_post) {
        $current_key = $this_key;
      } else if ($current_key!="") {
        if ($next_key=="") $next_key = $this_key;
      } else {
        $prev_key = $this_key;
      }
    }
    if ($prev_key)
      echo "<a href=\"".$all_posts[$prev_key]."\">prev</a>";
    if ($next_key)
      echo "<a href=\"".$all_posts[$next_key]."\">next</a>";
?>
</MainOrArchivePage>
</code>

but, you'd think that something like blogger with so many users would have stupid things like <$BloggerPreviousArchiveURL$> and <$BloggerNextArchiveURL$> defined, right? nope. blogger is so i-post-as-many-times-as-i-can-per-day that i guess the normal user would not have a need for it. who knows.

it's been little hiccups like this that made me a better programmer. or something. example. i used blogger for almost a year, using it as it was back then (2000). it wasn't google-ized yet, but it was functional. but, every day, little things like not being able to link to other posts drive me crazy. so, i left blogger for a while, using my own software that i wrote.

but it was software that i wrote, and if it broke, i couldn't post. but, it made me a better programmer because of it, because in my mind, the sky's the limit as far as features, and everything that i could think of, i put in.

now, i'm back using blogger because sometime in 2003, i had a major server problem, and quite literally lost my content managment software. gone. *poof*. so i gave up on the software, editing raw html for a while. which got tiring, so i just stopped posting all together.

anyways... back to present day. i'm using blogger again because i'm too lazy to write my own software to post all over again. at the same time, i'm also using greymatter, livejournal, & xanga. why, you ask? there's a good reason.

in my new job, with my background in writing content managment systems, and journaling software, they've asked me to write a journal feature as an add-in to gaia's framework. so, i'm writing it all over again. this time, i'm playing around with all of the different software, figuring out which are the best parts of each, which parts are completely not-needed, and then taking all that's left, toning it down for a average user of 13-20, and making it something that the 850,000 users on our site can use.

it's a bit of a fun project.