Well, it's like this: I'm going to try and use coveredinbees as the information repository for my PhD. As outlined in 'about CIB', only time will tell if this is a good idea. Perhaps there's a good reason why I haven't heard of anyone else doing it.

The old site is here. This first bit of writing is mainly just for my benefit, so I have a record of what I thought I was doing at the start. See the subscription page for getting a relevant RSS for future postings.

It's taken a couple of days to get the new version of the site set up. I'm predicting there will be more work in the future making bespoke modules to interact with the data, and to present it. I'm using Drupal in a couple of other projects too, and am slowly learning its innards with the help of an excellent book.

Let me have a go at justifying why an open source online content management system is the way to go:

1. For the reasons given here.
2. I'm a trainee geek - I don't need a reason. It's just cool.
3. I can go to Web of Science, find articles, click the 'save to my Endnoteweb' button, export from Endnoteweb, import into the awesome biblio module and, combined with faceted searching, all the authors, titles, keywords and journals are automatically catalogued and made accessible via a big heap of search methods. And (after a little hackery) I can now use their index number in the text to make footnotes - as well as writing that number on any hard copies I print for easy numerical filing. So I've finally cleared that pile of papers off my desk. Sweet.
4. Except now CIB tells me which readings I haven't read (see 'reading status' right.) It would be nice to store two values over time: the number of readings and number of unread readings. I'm hoping, imagining, that the first number will grow over time, then slow and stop, and the second converge. Mmm.
5. I'm using a star system for writing: five stars = academic publishable quality(!), one star = bog standard notes and opinions. All writing can be tagged - I've consciously decided to keep categorisation as loose as possible, but tagging should work perfectly for tying various parts together. Everything is a node, and tags are the edges. Tags autocomplete in Drupal so it's easy as pie to categorise stuff dynamically over time. Oh how I love tags.
6. Anyone wanting to subscribe can decide what they want to read. This was the case with the old site as well, though I didn't know it. Go look here for some subscription options - I'm categorising entries as either 'academic', 'writing' (i.e. non-academic but still aiming for relevance and interest) and 'gubbins', which is self-indulgent stuff like this that some people might not want to read. Now no-one has to. This bit of writing right here is gubbins, in fact. It's even possible to subscribe to the library so a person can know whenever new articles and books get added. I can't imagine the world has anyone who'd want to do that, but I can see how it might be useful in collaborative groups.
7. I'll knock up a module to show random snippets of writing or readings to keep things churning over. Randomness is a great way to access information that becomes archaeological over time. I also have some vague notion that I can pose questions to myself, fed back randomly, but timed in such a way that I'll absorb them - but that's probably just bobbins. I'd end up ignoring it.

And obviously I'll be following a solid backup routine, hopefully involving automatic nightly cron tasks.

I have a strong sense of deja vu suddenly. In the words of the scary Cylon lady, all of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.