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We Are Off - Finally

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As you can see I've finally proceeded with getting my site here up and running. While doing so, I thought this might be a good place to start with the blog. After all I'm building this site so that others will notice me and hire me to build and maintain their websites. Even if you don't need me to design anything for you, hopefully you'll find something here that will inspire you or solve a problem. At the very least you can always drop me a line or comment. I'm one of those sick junkies who actually likes to get email. I know crazy.

Before we get on with the next improvement for this site, I thought it might be a good idea to review what we have going for us right now.

Here is a list of current features of this website.

• Django
based blog. I built a custom CMS, more about this in future posts.
• Advertising section (none yet, I'm waiting for you)
• Browsing by Category
• Latest tweets
• Search

I know that all sounds pretty simple and probably wonder why I would go through all of this trouble when I can just use Wordpress and get all of that plus more right out of the box. Well the reason for that, is that I wanted to create something that in the future I can do more with. I like doing things that I have control over, and not at the mercy of a product that can change the way they do something and half of my website stops working.

Another reason that I built my own, is because I spent most of my professional life working with Enterprise Content Management Systems. With that, I think that I could build a fairly rich CMS targeted for the SMB's. I want to build something that is:

1. Repeatable. Modular in a way that I can pick up the code and move it between clients without sharing content.
2. Follow the DRY concept (Don't Repeat Yourself)
3. Flexible. I want to be able to build new features.
4. Enjoyable. Writing things in python is easy and fun

So that's what I did and that's what I aim to provide my customers. Maybe at some point I'll release the code and offer it as a package or service. But that's something for later. Right now I want to list the improvements are are coming.

Improvements

Here is a list of things I really want to get accomplished to make the site much more exciting and lets face it, usable. Right now the site is nice if all you want to do is just read one of my posts. Other than that, it's pretty lame and needs a lot of TLC to make it into something that someone else might want me to build for them. Now on to the list of improvements:

• Syndication Feeds. This is fairly easy with Django and should be fast, plus who has a website without feeds anymore?
• Better footer. I think the footer is important and I want to create a footer that stands out and is useful.
• Recent Posts. This might be something that goes in the footer, but I haven't decided that yet. I want something that people can use to see if they have missed something. Not sure if this is really useful or not, but i like it.
• Most Popular. Being popular is more than just having a lot of page views. I think there needs to be some other algorithm that goes into that calculation. Page views plus the number of comments should have some meaning, just not sure how it will be weighted yet. Stay Tuned!
• Polls. I like polling people, especially if you have a fairly good following of readers.
• Navigation. This should probably be first on the list. I really need to help people find their way around the site. Not only is it important in the header, but for individual post as well. My thought is the longer I can keep you on my site the better.
• Links. We've all seen the "Blog Role" thing on peoples sidebar, but I'm not really to keen on that idea. To me that becomes a place for dead links and really only does one thing really good. Promote other blogs. I want a section that allows me to show you what I'm linking to currently. Not what I found interesting 6 months ago, you can find that in the archives.
• Archives. In the last sentence I mentioned archives, and you can't get there if I don't have anything right? So yeah I need to build an archive section.
• Contact Form. Right now your just going to have to send me an email. But soon we'll have a contact form, and yes I do read my email and WILL respond to you.
• Social Stuff. So we all know that you aren't going to get noticed unless you really do something cool and inventive. So I need to stay up with all the latest Social technologies to get my name out there. And I really need to write a lot, I mean like a ton and keep people involved in what I'm doing. Maybe I'll be the next twitter? Dream Big.
• Stuff. I'm sure I'll come up with more fun and inventive ways to do things. So we'll keep adding them to the list.
• Create the list. Yeah so now I have list here, I need to build something into my CMS so I can manage it.

So that looks like a bunch of work don't you thing? Well the good part is that it's going to FUN and hopefully pretty inspirational. But I don't have any time to waste, so I need to get started on the navigational elements.

Current Projects

In Production