look different? new host + new software!
yes, things look quite different. let me explain.
i’ve switched web hosting companies, which in itself should not make a marked difference in the site. but while i did this, i upgraded my site to the latest release candidate of Drupal, an Open Source website management system (they call it “community plumbing” and i think that suits it well).
so now i’m on Drupal 5.0 RC1, instead of Drupal 4.7.4. this is the default theme, “Garland” with a few little tweaks. i will be further updating the php code to fix a few pecadillos that i’ve observed, but other than that, i think the out-of-the-box experience with Drupal 5.0 RC1 has been fantastic.
a brave new world of web publishing
so, i’ve begun experimenting with a desktop client to update my site from.
generally this is meaningless to the reader, unless the reader is a geek like me. what this will do, however, is allow me to update this site using a simple desktop application on my computer. this will allow me to more easily work offline and update more frequently — that’s good for everybody!
theme update
updated my theme a bit. wanted to show off some of my photos in Flickr on the right.
look for more and subtle updates in the near future.
photo galleries are back
i’ve put some of my photo galleries back online, courtesy of flickr. these were popular when i first put them up, now you can all use flickr’s interface (and bandwidth) to see them again.
Portland International Rose Test Garden, 2003
Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, 2003
enjoy!
site updates - updated CMS software, and URL aliases
here’s one for the geeks in the audience (sorry, mom & mom-in-law).
i’ve recently updated my site to the latest stable release of my content management system, and discovered functionality (that’s existed in it for quite some time) to alias the big ugly URLs i was previously using, down to nice quick ones.
for example:
this url: http://mikeyboy.com/taxonomy/term/2/all is now represented simply as: http://mikeyboy.com/travel
probably doesn’t mean a hill of beans to anyone but me, but i think it’s fun. and it should help google to classify my content as well.
experimenting with comments
this morning you may have seen links to post comments on articles. i’m experimenting with the comment module in my site software. i’ve since turned it back off for a while; my design template doesn’t display it too well so i’ll need to tweak that over the weekend.
i plan to enable moderated comments first, and we’ll see how that goes. after which i may allow anonymous comments.
my fear though is that folks looking to spam or otherwise post inappropriate content might find this blog and go to town. this is obviously unacceptable (both my mom and my mother-in-law read this — hi moms!) so moderation will probably be the rule for a while.
pictures added to various parts of the site
i’ve updated the site, adding pictures back in to various sections. (by popular demand)
updated sections include:
vehicles » f-150 (update: link fixed)