I’m creating a personal information manager using WordPress. Yesterday I downloaded a bleeding edge copy of WordPress and uploaded it to my newly created subdomain pim.johnhesch.com.
I found the theme I want to use. I’m looking for a minimalistic theme that’s crisp and clean. Design is not a concern because I’m the only one that will see it once my PIM goes live. I decided to use the Benevolence theme by Theron Parlin. I use another one of his themes for my BloggingPro website. If you’re following along and want to find a theme other then what I’m using check here. I have pretty much every WordPress theme available listed.
Last night I also created my database for the WordPress installation and installed WordPress. I had forgotten at the time I wrote last nights post that pim.johnhesch.com is the same as johnhesch.com/pim and so I was able to install WordPress without the updated DNS settings.
I also went to the user settings and changed the administrator password. I also changed the nickname to John but that doesn’t really matter since I am the only one that will be posting to my PIM. There won’t be any need to display the name of the person writing the entry. I then deleted the default post and all the links that come with a standard WordPress install.
I need to allow uploads so in Options under Miscellaneous Options I checked Allow File Uploads. I don’t want the files to go into the folder wp-content, so I went onto the server and created a new sub folder of wp-content called files and made it writable. Then back to the WordPress administration and changed the upload Destination directory and URI of this directory to include a subfolder called files. I also checked Track Link’s Update Times, more about this later, and then submitted the changes.
Next I went to Discussion Options and unchecked Attempt to notify any Weblogs linked to from the article. I don’t want to ping any other blogs when I post an entry. Next, over to Writing Options and I changed to Advanced Controls and removed http://rpc.pingomatic.com/.
I then changed some of the code in the theme’s CSS file so that the page takes up 100% of my available browser and I changed the header image. I’m not really excited about the image I’m using but for now it will do. I also changed some of the font settings.
I didn’t have time this evening to get any plugins installed or decide on categories. We’ll shoot for tomorrow.
Welcome to johnhesch.com, a blog about my life, projects, and interests. I have been blogging for over 10 years in one form or another.
I went through a similar thing recently. I’m using WordPress for a personal journal and MediaWiki to keep track of thoughts, notes, etc. I’m still exerimenting with things, and am curious to see how your experience using WordPress will turn out.
One question for you, though. Have you thought about how you’re going to protect this thing? Will there be a password or something?
When I built my system I was a little worried about how to keep snooping eyes out. The solution I came up with was to build it on my own computer. This may sound difficult, and I honestly wasn’t sure if I would be able to figure it out. It’s actually much easier than you think. The installations for Apache, PHP, and MySQL are surprisingly user-friendly. Once installed, your page loads up at http://localhost. No one can access it from the web, and you know you’ll always be able to load it even if your server goes down for any reason.
One obvious set-back is that you’d no longer be able to access it from the web. It’s the age-old question you face between POP mail or web-based email. If you work on multiple computers and need to have your PIM everywhere you go, keeping it online would obviously be the way to go.
Anyway, hope this rambling has been useful. If you’d like to read about how I set mine up, I have a blog entry about it at http://www.joeyday.com/2005/01/19/localhost.
Joey, I’ll be using Apache’s .htaccess to limit access to authorized users only. It’s simple and effective. I’ll cover it in more detail as I prepare to lock down the PIM. I’m heading over to your site to see what you’ve done right now. Thanks.
I’ve recently decided to do the same thing, only my approach is very different. My information manager is going to be Gmail.
So far, it’s frickin awesome!
But I was wondering, are you planning to modify the wordpress system for your PIM? If so, how/why? What are the benefits of creating something like this with a blog, as opposed to using yahoo mail, Gmail, or using a PDA? I’m only asking because your idea sounds very interesting and if I see benefits, I might give it a try myself.
Are you planning to modify the wordpress system for your PIM? If so, how/why?
I’m going to try not to modify any core files so I can upgrade to future versions of WordPress without having to make all the changes again. There are so many plugins available that I’m hopeful I can do everything I need with plugins.
What are the benefits of creating something like this with a blog, as opposed to using yahoo mail, Gmail, or using a PDA?
Gmail actually makes a lot of sense. It has a free gig of storage, an awesome search feature, tags, and you can either email your data or set up a drive extension and just drag and drop files to your Gmail drive.
But, I gather a lot of data from the web and using WordPress makes it easy for me to use the WP bookmarklet to capture data contained on web pages. This makes research for future projects easy as well as creating a personal reference library. I also have the journal feature of WordPress to organize my thoughts, ideas, inspiration, and questions.
Also, I prefer not to rely on a third party to be responsible for all my data. I prefer to have it under my control and where I can back it up on a regular basis.
I use a lot of PHP code in my web sites and I find snippets of code that I think I may use some day but I never have a central place to store them. WordPress will be perfect for that.
These are just some of the ideas for my PIM. Like I mentioned in part 1 of my PIM project I have so much data that I have accumulated over the years and it’s scattered throughout a lot of different applications. The PIM should be able to accommodate all of my data.
Thanks, that’s good info. Also, I didn’t know about Gmail drive until I read your comment, so I looked it up and I’m gonna try it out. I think I’ll give Gmail a try first, but I never thought of using wp as a pim before reading your post, and I find the idea very interesting, I’ll be following your progress.