I have owned my domain, www.shadownet.org.uk since about 1999. Originally I put up a couple of simple pages built in straight HTML and that was pretty cool. Then I learnt about things like css and JavaScript and I did some work on a couple of sites using the things I had learnt. Time went on and I learnt about asp and php. People started creating systems that were driven form databases and had dynamic content, Flash and Shockwave came on the scene. From time to time I got to work with some of these new things, but often to actually host them was fairly expensive.
After a while the cost of hosting sites that could use these technologies came down. There are many hosting providers that off all sorts of deals at all sorts of different prices. Personally I use www.Servage.net. For around $6 Australian a month I get my domain registered, the ability to host multiple domains, 510Gb of data space, unlimited email accounts plus php and mySql support.
As I had moved hosting providers my website had disappeared into the cyber-ether and anyone visiting my site was greeted with a friendly message that the domain was registered but nothing had been done with it. And it stayed that way for about a year. So I had this domain name, I had more space than I knew what to do with, I still had the original site on disk somewhere but I hadn't uploaded it. So in the 9 years I had owned the domain I really hadn't achieved more than half a dozen static pages.
Finally this month I decided to do something about it. I looked at the offerings from my hoster and found that they had a number of packages that could be auto installed on their systems. there were Blogs, Wiki's, Forums, Group calendars, image gallery's, guest books, polls and content management systems.
Now most people that know me know I like to have pet projects and that I really learn by doing. There is really very little point in giving me a book and saying 'learn this' if I am not applying what I am learning as I go. So I thought a good way to learn about some of these things, given we do a sizable amount of web development at work, would be to attempt to build up a new website and start using some of the things that are available directly from my hosting provider as well as some custom stuff.
I had a play with the various options provided and finally settled on have a Content Management system called e107 as the platform for the bulk of my site. As I take a lot of photos, especially at family events, and want to be able to share them I choose Coppermine as an online gallery. Some digging around got me some scripts and walk through's of how to integrate the 2 packages so they seamlessly merge.
Next I decided on the basics of what I wanted on the site.
I have opted for having news articles, the gallery for my photos, the ability for people to become members of the site, a forum with areas open to everyone and some that are limited to members or specific sub-groups of members, calendar functionality and the ability to have a downloads area (most likely so I can upload higher res images for the photos).
At the moment I am using an out of the box theme but I intend to redesign it, once I have decided what I want the site to look like visually. I am tempted to put up an area that pages homage to the original site I built.
I am sure as I think of things, or as people suggest ideas to me I'll find more stuff to add. It's likely to take a while as I don't get to work on it anywhere near often enough but hopefully over time it will grow and become something I'll be proud to look at and say 'I made that'.
Feel free to check it out, if you want to you can join up or make some suggestions about improvements and enhancements to help give me ideas, and if anyone what's to come up with a theme idea for the site get in touch as for a graphical point of view I am not that good.
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