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New Look for the Battle Wagon Site |
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Written by Terry
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Friday, 10 November 2006 |
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BattleWagon.net has been completely redesigned! As you may have noticed, the old site was getting a bit clumsy to navigate, and it was even harder to edit and update. When the site was started in 1999, it was hand-coded HTML written with Notepad. That was quickly replaced by a shareware HTML editor from CoffeeCup Software, and finally by DreamWeaver from MacroMedia. Although DreamWeaver streamlined the process significantly, the pages still needed to be created individually. With anywhere from ten to fifty photo pages being added after each game, it was still quite time consuming. As the site grew to several hundred pages, DreamWeaver began to bog down to a hair-pulling, head-pounding crawl. Something needed to be done...
The new site is based on the open source Joomla CMS (content management system) project. The photo are maintained with Gallery2 from Menalto, another open source project, and integrated into Joomla with a bridge component. The bottom line is the new site will be faster, more user friendly, easier to maintain, and have a bunch of new features. Among them: - Users can leave comments on photos
- Users can add links to Vikings or tailgating related sites
- The guest book has anti-spam security features
- Visitors can "rate" the photos
- Discussion board will be available
- RSS feeds to notify you of updated content
Some of the new features will require a user ID and password. Just register with the Login form on the bottom left of most pages, and you're set (no spam, I promise). In the future, additional features are planned, including the ability for users to submit photos, a web cam (virtual tailgating), as well as many others. I encourage any comments you may have, positive or negative, as the site progresses.
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