Tuesday 17 May 2011

Major Change Begins Now

My main website is old. It reflects the time I lived in New Holland. I am currently starting to experiment on a major and thoroughgoing overhaul. So far a method I discussed for the Hull church website (so to gain more immediate control beyond a main page) is working for me, but the question is what kind of overhaul do I want.

  • Do I want to change how it is uploaded? Yes, for a free broadband version.
  • Do I want to change its design? Don't know
  • Do I want to reduce the number of images? Yes - some are old and out of date
  • What about placing the graphics? I don't want to put them in my own webpages. Yesterday I rejected Flickr as a place to put them - I actually think Facebook may be as good as any.
  • Where's the focus? I want the website to be more academic and more a resource. The blog can handle news with the immediate issues and Facebook can handle personal interest.
  • What about the blog? The blog can front end the website I think; I want to place some of the blog articles on to the website.

I know that these days templates are offered and so much is made easy, but I'd rather control the structure given the volume of articles. At the moment I am succeeding in creating a website where my FTP method could not be easier, and to edit is to upload, but content goes from the existing website and the repairs needed, and the redoing of content and absolute URLs, is considerable (relative ones remain working). Seven free accounts broken down into folders with shared names with their real URLs will become one account and different folders.

It is amazing how, when you leave a website alone, and yet life moves on, the website becomes out of date and even starts to lose its connections. The newer website has an online presence already, as I need to check it works, but it will build in secret and it will be one main URL that will change over, and instant links to that when the public change comes.

In the meantime something must give, and this will be this blog. If I'm doing the website, I'm not doing the blog.

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