Narrative Posts

Twenty years ago, I built a blogging platform called Narrative. It was an ASP.NET-based CMS with advanced features like automatic page rebuilding, a sophisticated tagging system, and comment spam prevention. I used it to power this site from 2003 until 2008, when I abandoned it in favor of WordPress, saying "I am much more interested in blogging than the building of blogging software." That code sat shelved for nearly two decades. Then, in 2024, I discovered Claude Code and realized something profound: with AI assistance, I could finally bring Narrative back to life—not as a compromise, but as exactly the system I'd always envisioned. This post tells that story.

All of my websites are in the process of migrating away from my homegrown blogging software - Exposition / Narrative / Rendition - in favor of the latest version of WordPress. The reason? Simply put, I am much more interested in blogging than the building of blogging software. I originally created Narrative because there wasn't a good blogging package for ASP.NET. Now, almost 6 years later, while I still work as a .NET architect, I spend all of my time on a Mac, which means I have access to a LAMP stack, etc. Anyway, you'll see a lot of changes here due to the conversion, the first of which is that comments are now open on all posts going forward.

I have not even been to my own website in over 6 months. Now that I've seen it, I don't like the design anymore. I dislike the font and everything looks a little too red, white, and blue. I'm quite the patriotic dude but I don't feel the need to splash the national colors on my website. Hence, I will be coming up with a new stylesheet soon.

I started ForkBender.com with a first post on May 27, 2003. The software I use to maintain this blog is called Exposition (which sits on a CMS I wrote called Narrative). This software dates back to February, 2003. So in the next few months, I will have had Narrative and Exposition in production for 5 years! The software now powers almost a dozen websites and contains a couple of thousand posts and images. I took most of last year off to move and do other things but I am working on the software again and am looking to post more often as well. Here's to 2008!

I put a new look and feel up over the weekend. I got rid of the three-column layout in favor of a two-column layout with a top-level menu nav. There are a number of subtle "under the covers" improvements:

A new version of Narrative is now in beta. This page was generated by the new CMS, built on Narrative, called Exposition. One big change you might notice is the new page naming convention, where the title of the article is transformed into the page name.

ForkBender.com now has a new search box! The Narrative CMS now has search capabilities and ForkBender.com is the beta test site. When you type in a word like "powerlifting" or "golf" in the search box at the top of the right-hand column and press ENTER or click "Search", a search results page will appear. This functionality will be changing (read: improving) a lot in the next few weeks. Let me know if you run into any issues.

I am in the middle of a site redesign this week so bear with me as pages might have the occasional funny look. Also, if you have any feedback on the new look, feel free to drop me a line. Thanks!

It's been at least 3 or 4 months since I got a new release of the Narrative CMS out there. I'm in the progress of updating it now and am still working out a few glitches.

I claim victory over the spambot that was attacking my website. I crush it like grape between my fingers. Crush it!!!

I haven't posted since waaaaay back in October, before I went to Istanbul to visit Ahu's side of the family. The reason is that this website has been attacked every single day by a new breed of "spam" - the comment advertisement. About 150 or so comments have been added to various articles on this website advertising everything from online casinos to phentermine. I can't tell if it is being done by a person or by a new spambot but its been a bit annoying.

It's been a busy week. My last post was related to Narrative and so is this one. I am racing to get out some new features. These include:

I released a new version of ForkBender and Narrative this weekend. v0.6.0 is finally out. You will remember, of course, that Narrative is the Content Management System that enables me to create the content for this website. There have been a lot of changes in this release, some of which are visible to you:

Google is now showing this site as the #1 result when searching for "forkbender". This might seem a no-brainer but until recently, the "forkbender" at the top of the list was some website related to Uri Geller, the original spoon bending freak of the 1970s.

I spent a lot of time this past weekend retooling the ForkBender site and applying a new look and feel to the site. I hope everyone likes it. It is a major departure from the old look. A list of books I've read in the past and movies I seen in the past is now also available. I am getting ready to create a new List content type in Narrative so that I can create Top 10 Lists of favorite books, movies, restaurants, stores, etc.

ForkBender.com is a production of Charles Sieg and Renkara Media Group, Inc. ForkBender.com takes the place of personal.charlessieg.com.

Have been thinking a lot about how to improve this site. I want this site to be, essentially, a brain depository. I will remove things from my brain and deposit them here to be preserved for eternity...or until my server crashes, catches on fire, and is lost forever. Oh, wait, that is what backups are for...doh!