To say I haven't been happy lately is quite an understatement. My site has been down, obviously, and I'm grumpy. I know I'm normally grumpy, but not on the grump level that's been seen lately.

WordPress was a wonderful content management solution. It really was. All you had to do was pick someone else's design for your site and start writing. The plug-ins handled just about everything you needed to add to the site, from SEO management to galleries to display your pictures.

When it works, it's a beautiful thing. It really, really is.

Sadly, I don't know what I do to kill it, but I tend to be the killer of good WordPress installations. This is now the second time that we've lost everything due to a database error. I'm not doing anything to the databases on my own and we've actually used two different servers so it's not something that can be fixed with a new server solution. Sometimes it just dies, for whatever reason, and I don't have the time nor the effort to figure out what's wrong with it.

So what DO I have time to do? Why, throw money at the problem, of course! I'm doing what I always do -- spending money I don't really have -- coming up with something on the fly that will fix things once and for all. This time it's a registered copy of DreamWeaver and about $200 in plug-ins that will mimic everything I could do with WordPress for free!

Before you point out any logic holes in that course of action I do want to point out that we have a big DONATE button on the bottom of every page for a reason. If you click it and GIVE ME MONEY I may actually listen to what your opinion is on this matter. Until then, quietly watch me self destruct as I learn new things and reinvent the wheel here.

This process has been overwhelming. A lot is going on in my personal life on top of having to rebuild my site from scratch. I may whine those things in the future, but for now, just know that we're back from the brink and slowly but slowly, the site will be alive again.

Maybe.

Shaddup you.

Update 8/2

Hopefully the fact that you're reading this means that I've made quite a bit of progress on the site since last time I updated things.

It's now Tuesday morning and I've used Dreamweaver & plugins to design about five new looks for various pages on the site. Right now this is my first official test of the rants page and while there's some limitations on CSS styles (I'll figure them out eventually), I do like the look and feel that I've come up with.

Someone posed the question, "What makes the site cool anyway?" I don't really have a response to him. Other than that's the only name I could think of when I registered it in 2001. I do think that we have cool content (returning soon enough), but the only advertising I stand by is that we're "really." You can insert your own adjective after that.

Me? I'm just glad that the site is coming back and it's not a total PITA to update.

Update 10/20

Well, quite obviously, it didn't work. I had high hopes for the DreamWeaver install or else I wouldn't have pursued it but... the site's too big. It's impossible to manage without some sort of automation and because of it, we're now on Joomla. What was the old saying? "The more things change, the more it's the same from Jim?" Yeah. Applies here.

-- Jim

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