Taking a break from industrious information systems, we decided to use our tools for good, trying our hand at building a blog platform, to see just how tricky it actually was.

The verdict: tricky being an understatement. The simple type-post-view architecture is simple, that much was a given. The unknown quantities were tagging, viewing, archiving and the ever-present feed issue.

Still, some deft database querying, a bundle of expletives and a few hundred lines of code later, we have our baby, a blogging system with search-engine-friendly URLs, full RSS support and automatic archiving.

We try to keep our clients at the forefront of emerging technologies, blogging being a useful tool to improve search rankings, conversations with customers and to present new information about a site or company.

Many packages out there "do" blogging, but with a very narrow remit and most have a "walled garden" approach, very un-Web2.0, unshareable information and such. To create a platform we were confident with, could deploy with ease and offered the level of service we needed it to have, we realised we would have to build it ourselves.

We now have a stable, secure, reliable and flexible platform we can offer our clients, tightly integrated into their CMS and with the rest of their sites' dynamic aspects.

We're very proud parents.