However, I’ve gotten some feedback that the design has a serious flaw, and I see it when it’s pointed out to me. By separating the reply form from the message in different tabs, you can’t refer to the message while you’re composing your reply. That was dumb of me–of course you need to see the message you’re responding to it. So I’ll soon be replacing this with a layout that puts the reply form along side the message when click a “reply” icon, so you can see both while you write.

The software right now is configured for a familiar forum table of contents layout, like the Zone standard. But it can be configured for other layouts, including blog-like layouts. And, the software can generate automatic compilations of posts by author (http://habitablezone.com/author/username; see http://habitablezone.com/author/frankc/ for instance). Put those two things together, and yep, you have a personal HabitableZone blog.

I wouldn’t recommend you sweat learning the present system of marking posts private or password-protected and in categories and all that. I’ll be adding a different system for making some forums private and public and members-only etc., so wait for that. OTOH, if you’re so inclined, the base software is WordPress, and it’s so widely popular that you’ll find a mountain of tutorials and tips and other stuff about it. You could start at the source, at their main site, wordpress.org. Enough of that core survives to be interesting, like the system of software plugins. You can start adding features to the site at any time.