It’s a Big Adventure… - Tue, 18 Dec 2007

One thing leads to another, and it now seems I’ve almost got everything properly planned, and I just have to do it!

This really is the best time to update my site and set everything up better, before I get to Beta.

The move to the new webhost is required, and I’ll have to test that everything works the same at the new site. I’ve got scripts to send out the trial key, programs to deal with purchases, a database and mailing list of users, my blog, the user Forum, and all the webpages themselves.

The domain will become www.beholdgenealogy.com and the site will look more professional. The sample page I have there is undergoing a few changes, but I’m fairly happy with the way it looks.

I’ve decided to use the new Web Standards, that weren’t around 10 years ago when I first put up my web pages. I’ve been studying and learning how to develop websites with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and ended up purchasing the program TopStyle Pro to help me build the pages.

I’ll be switching to Wordpress for my blog, which means delving more into the PHP language and the MySQL database.

For the Forum, I originally thought I’d use Simple Machines, then in my previous post, I mentioned that Google Groups was a possibility. But now I think the one to use is Vanilla, a simple but extendible and powerful free forum package that’s a bit different than the rest. I like when they announce a new version and say “Now available with fewer features”. It is less than a 400 KB download! Amazing! And I’ll be able to integrate it and Wordpress together so you’ll have a single login.

Then I might even switch to PhpList to manage my mailing list and user database. My current mailing list program is ASP based and will start to bog down once I get to 5,000 mailings. PhpList should be good to 100,000. Again it uses MySQL and I might be able to integrate it with Wordpress and Vanilla.

So there’s a fair bit on my plate. A move, a new design, learning to use 4 new software programs, a new database package and conversions of all my webpages, procedures and data. Sounds a bit overwhelming when I think about it. But now that the plan is in place, it’s just a matter of doing it a step at a time.

I know this will delay my Beta release, but it will be very worthwhile in the long run. Hopefully this will all go smoothly and won’t take too long. We’ll see how it goes.