Me and my wife Rita have discovered it a few years back while wondering around the city and looking for a place to sit down and relax. Once we entered the cafe, we both knew it’s a unique place in its atmosphere. It was early afternoon and the place was almost empty. Jazz music was pouring out of the speakers. We were having a cup of coffee accompanied with cake, relaxing and looking around appreciating the interior decor. I took a few shots with my camera hoping to get them right in a dark interior of the cafe lighted up only by dimmed daily light and candles burning on a few tables.

Later on back home, we were watching slides from our trip and remembering the places we have visited. The Singer cafe and slides I took there turned out to be one of our favourites. All thanks to the charming atmosphere of old interior with famous brand vintage sewing machines recycled in coffee tables and candle holders.

Rita came up with the idea to make a theme that would reflect the place atmosphere we liked so much. And so, the Jazz Cafe theme was born.

The theme was originally created for Typo, Ruby on Rails blogging system and later on ported to Serendipity. Recently, I refreshed the theme for this website and released it for WordPress. If you want to give it a spin on your blog, you can download the latest version here: JazzCafe (zip file). And, if you use the theme I would love to here from you.

The design

For some time now, I’ve been working to redesign this site. At first, my intention was to start from scratch and give it a completely new and fresh look. But after a few hours spend with Fireworks working on a new design I found myself looking at my aging Typo’s Jazz Cafe theme screenshot. I realized, I still like it a lot and would like to give it well deserved refreshment. So what should have been a new design, turned out to be another revision of my old Jazz Cafe theme. While it still requires some polishing, I’m happy with it for now.

Under the hood

It is difficult to argue which of the currently available blogging applications is the best. And what makes live even more difficult, is the fact that there are a lot of them available. Each one has its own advocates, cons and pros. I’m long time MovableType user but felt like I need to look for an application giving me more freedom to experiment with code and extend functionality. Also, I’m more comfortable with PHP and Python then Perl. Keeping that in mind I narrowed a set of candidates I should evaluate to WordPress, Expression Engine and writing my own blogging application in django.

First, I ruled out the last option as one taking to much time. I know, you can implement basic django blog application in a few hours but to get complete functionality provided by “of the shelf” blogging applications would take more time. I like django framework a lot but I also know myself. I would spend a lot of time perfecting the implementation up. Being busy with other projects I simply can not afford it regardless of how much I would like to do it.

Second option on my list, Expression Engine, is to me more of a content management system then blogging application. It’s not open source, and is only free for non commercial use. I find it an overkill for a simple blogging site like this. But, if you look for more functionality like simple e-commerce, wiki or forum, all under one administration, I encourage you to give it a serious thought. I personally see it as cost effective, “of the shelf” solution offering functionality that can be easily tailored to most of the client projects you may experienced in your daily work.

WordPress is in my case clear winner. Very popular, open source PHP application providing basic blog functionality that can be easily extended with endless list of existing plug-ins and dressed up with themes. I like the approach taken by WordPress project of having a good core functionality implementation, also providing clear plug-in mechanism allowing you to tailor the application to your own needs. A friend of mine told me once about some product he bought, “I simply like it, it does exactly what I need, nothing less and nothing more.” I have exactly the same feeling about WordPress, the only difference is, you can make it do more with plug-ins if you wish.

From now on

So here it is, the new design and content management system. What to expect next you may ask. I would like to start writing. While I can’t promise to do it on daily basis I hope to be able to do it regularly. I would like to share wisdom gained from ongoing projects: solutions to problems, small snippets of code, tutorials or reviews. Also, I will be releasing Jazz Cafe theme for Worpress. Stay tuned if you want to give it a try on your own blog.

Thanks for reading and I hope to see you coming back.