I think (and correct me if I’m wrong) that this site is fully functional again. After much work and many late night hours the site is running on the new
server and seems to be doing fine. As soon as the backup server is done I’ll be adding content daily. It’s amazing how much energy goes into heating up water before it starts to boil.

Things I’ll be looking into:

  1. Getting rid of Wordpress. (actually getting rid of all bridges)
    1. This means using Jooma for blogging. I think that it may have all the stuff needed now.
  2. Making a new joomla module that provides an AJAX accordian menu for the items on the left.
  3. Maybe getting rid of the major categories on the left and put them in a menu lining the top of the site.
  4. Actually finishing the Gallery theme that uses AJAX to provide for very quick (feeling) picture viewing and sideshows without giving up what I have now. And make it really cool looking.
  5. Move to Joomla 1.5 as soon as it’s done. This will make blogging with it much easier.
  6. Move to the commercial Jooma Reviews module for all reviews
  7. Completely rewrite the cookbook module. Currently it’s barely usable. I’ll use Garys cookbook as a base and build something wonderful!
  8. Optimize the site. I’ve been saying this for months but really I have to get the functionality first. I’ll optimize all the images, php code, php acceleration, database etc… Using AJAX will make it feel faster but I still want to cut down on the amount of data that needs to be downloaded and the amount that needs to be interpreted by PHP. I’m moving so I may be able to get a faster line too as well as throw more hardware at my end.
  9. SEO - enough said.

There’s a lot to do but hopefully I can be adding content while I’m doing it.

Content changes:

  1. I’d like to add podcasts for trips that we take in addition to the photos, movies and blogs that I currently have.
  2. More movies via utube or similar service linked into content. Heck if they’re providing bandwidth…
  3. Gimp tutorials as I figure stuff out. The photography section will grow with time.
  4. Forums? Something I keep telling myself that I don’t need but sometimes I would be really nice to have a discussion place so people can discuss topics like cooking, travel etc.. I’m just not satisfied with any of the offering for Joomla as their all bridges or crap. I want the bridges gone.

Grant