Second, there are alternatives to the standard sysklogd package. The alternatives attempt to be more efficient, easier to configure, and possibly more feature-rich than sysklogd. Syslog-ng and Metalog seem to be some of the more popular alternatives; you might investigate them if you find sysklogd doesn't provide the level of power you need.

Third, you can log messages in your scripts using the logger command. See the logger(1) man page for more information.