YABE – Yet Another Blog Engine

Lord knows that the last thing the world needs is another blog engine.

But our goal isn’t to build a blog engine per se. Our goal is to learn how to build Erlang applications using a specific tool set.  So let’s get with it.

As a first cut, let’s assume that our blog will have the following pages and features:

Public Pages

• Home page displays most recent posts by month
• Archive list enables consumer to select posts by month
• Tag list enables consumer to select posts by topic
• Consumer can respond to specific posts with comments

Administration Page

• Access to admin page requires un/pw authorization
• Admin can enter new post
• Admin can edit exisiting posts
• Admin can assign topical tags to post
• Admin can define new topical tags
• Admin can allow or deny comments

Are we missing anything essential? Please comment.

To build this we’re going to need:

• A data store. We’ll use Mnesia.
• A rendering engine. We’ll use Erlang and Nitrogen.
• A web server. We’ll use Mochiweb.

Again, please comment.

We’ll need to master:

• Basic CRUD operations on Mnesia.
• Various Erlang data structures.
• Erlang calendar functions.
• Factoring Erlang style.
• Nitrogen page construction.
• Building custom elements in Nitrogen.

And most probably much much more.

So what do you say? Should we:

• Scour the net for existing blog designs?
• Start designing top down?
• Start building bottom up?
• First build a tinker-toy model to learn our tools?

I’m torn. What do you say?