This is the description of the software that I use to create content and maintain this website, and the reasons why I use it. The executive summary being: it is cheap, it is powerful, it is easy to use, it is of good quality, it is efficient and it is fun to use.
Debian GNU/Linux: Debian is a fully free operating system (free as in freedom to do whatever you want to do with it with hardly any restrictions, as well as low cost - typically, only the cost of the CDs that it is distributed on). The quality and stability of Debian, the variety of software, and the package management framework & tools impress me a lot. The programs and packages in Debian are put together and tested by volunteers across the world. Debian is a fine example to support the fact that money sometimes does not matter much. Debian also has sub-projects that cater to the needs of specialized users like lawyers, schools, medical professionals, children at home, NGOs and desktop users.
VIm: VIm or VI Improved, is a excellent editor. The author of VIm raises money for charity through VIm. VIm supports syntax highlighting for a lot of languages, has facilities for doing operations on blocks of text, folding of blocks of text based on syntax, and is fully programmable. I use VIm to type my programs, create these webpages, write my email, read code and for practically anything that involves typing more than a few lines. I particularly like the macro functionality, plugins and programmability of VIm. There are other editors like Emacs that can do similar stuff, but I guess I like VIm too much to switch to any other editor.
WML: The Web Meta Language can be used to program websites and generate templated HTML. It is a powerful meta language that uses a few other languages (like Perl, mp4h etc.) as backends. It also comes with a make like utility called wmk. Originally, this website was created using the PHP scripts from Deepak's site with customizations made to suit my design and layout needs. The hosting server did not support PHP and I came across WML when I was searching for a tool that can be programmed to generate HTML pages off-line. Another advantage of not using PHP is that the pages can be cached by proxy servers.
WML and VIm come ready to use as (one of the over 15,000) software packages in Debian. Why don't you give these a try? If you are interested, I can help you install and get you started with this wonderful operating system (or for that matter, any Linux and GNU tools based OS). Get in touch with me.
