Websites are like buses
It's been a very busy year for me but I've finally managed to push through a new version of NeilDuffin.com and two other websites as well. Just like buses, you wait for ages and then three come along at once!
Historically NeilDuffin.com has always been a poor relation to the other sites I manage, including my Photography site.
But I've finally been able to give the site a little of the TLC it needs and bring the other sites up-to-date. While NeilDuffin.com has visibly changed, the other sites look largely the same on the surface yet all three have quite extensive modifications underneath...
- The sites have been moved to a new, more reliable hosting service.
- There's an all-new engine, replacing the old Dreamweaver built custom-PHP and WordPress code-base. This is a huge change and what you see is in many ways a totally rewrite.
- Images are served from a new image management system which handles resizing and presentation in a much more advanced way.
- A new set of graphics and CSS have been added to NeilDuffin.com, replacing the old 'layout'.
- Gone are the sub-domains for the blog and gallery. These are now part of the related site's main domain. You'll be redirected to the new blog or gallery if you access the old one.
So why such an extensive set of changes? Well, the reason is simple, the old sites just took too much work to maintain. I ran a trial of the new engine and found it very flexible. It takes a lot of the heavy lifting (and much of the lighter lifting) out of site updates and allows much more rapid development.
I've also moved Neil Duffin Photography over to the new system and made some additions to other sites, which has complicated and delayed the move. The sites now share a great deal of backend code, which makes them easier to update in the future but has taken some time to research and implement.
I've not finished the updates at this point and what you see is an initial version of all 3 sites. I've released these versions to provide a pretty face, some information on what's going on and contact pages.
Here is a sneak-peak at the upcoming additions...
- An update to the blog postings along with a general sweep through to clear out the fluff.
- Automatic redirection from old blog links. The main sites already have this but anyone visiting from a perma-link to the old blog will be redirected to a informational page. One of the larger jobs is the transfer, review and revision of approximately 100 blog postings.
- Likewise, the articles will receive a tidy-up.
- The very old blog entries will be integrated into the main blog and updated where necessary.
- A site-wide search and blog posting archive will be added alongside the spruced up postings.
- RSS feeds are on their way.
- New postings, I have a list of ideas sitting in my inbox.
- Lots more that I've not had time to add to the schedule yet.
I hope you like the new site and I'll keep you up-to-date with the changes as they happen.
Posted on Tue 22 Dec 2009 - 09:30
