Creating a blog from scratch is not a clever thing to do. There are too many out there already (DasBlog , Blogger , WordPress ). Blog is the new Hello World. However, having played with a couple of them over the years, I found myself frustrated - some being too simple, some too complex. In the end I wanted a blog specific to my evolving requirements. I also wanted an online note-taking system that would allow me to categorise my personal notes in a hierarchical/journal/wiki structure; and then to move a select few into a public blog format.