I was having some fun this weekend digging though the Wayback Machine. It’s neat to check out what I’ve run my ‘blog’ on over the years:

• Pre 1999 I was on all sorts of weird stuff but mostly static HTML (and maybe some PERL), on shared hosting (Tripod, etc).
• In 1999 – when we found out we were having Abby – I registered ‘thecrumb.com’. I was still handcoding it in old school HTML.
• 2001 – ColdFusion!
• 2003 – Geeklog – A PHP CMS
• 2004 – I tried out Movable Type and a few others…
• 2005 – Found WordPress

I couldn’t imagine going back to hand-coding! I have considered switching from WordPress to Movable Type again now that it is free but I’ve gotten comfortable with hacking on WordPress so really have no reason to move other than the geek factor of trying out something new.

Lately I ‘volunteered’ to take over our local PTA website. It was an attractive Flash site – but no tools were available to maintain it. Wanting to try something new – I checked out several of the major PHP CMS systems out there and finally settled on Joomla.

I got everything setup – it wasn’t too difficult but it did take some time to RTFM, experiment a bit and get everything configured correctly. Once I get it setup I thought it worked pretty good. It had news, an event calendar, etc. Nice. Or so I thought. Then one day I was talking to my wife and she politely informed me no one liked the new site.

“Everyone says the new site sucks” she said.

OK. Not really. But that’s how I interpreted it!!

She said people had mentioned it was ‘too complicated’.

So I had to backpedal a bit. What to do? Try another CMS? There are literally zillions of open source, free PHP based CMS systems.

Then I started looking at my blog and wondering why I couldn’t use WordPress? After digging through all the available plugs – I quickly made the decision to give it a shot, and once again WordPress amazed me in it’s flexibility and ease of use.

So it still took me some time – again to RTFM, find all the required plugins and get things setup and content transfered over – but in the end I’ve gotten very positive feedback about the new site. Management is also easy for me – the WordPress UI is dead simple, and if I ever need to turn the reigns over to someone else I feel comfortable knowing I can get someone up to speed on things very quickly.

If you are interested the site is here: http://www.hollygrovepta.org

Update:

Here is a quick list of plugins I used:

• cforms II – contact form
• Event Calendar (and widget) – events
• File icons – for newsletter and other uploaded docs
• Random quotes – Used to show volunteer opportunities in sidebar

There are a zillion themes out there – finding one suitable for your site is a matter of personal taste. I tried a lot of 3 column themes before settling on the current Cutline theme. Some were not widget ready. Some were poorly coded. But since switching themes in WordPress is so simple – it is very easy to try out a theme and if you don’t like it – delete it!

When looking at plugins – think outside the box. I had a huge list of volunteer opportunities I wanted to present – but wasn’t sure how best to display them without overwhelming viewers. When I was browsing through some plugins I stumbled upon the random quote plugin and discovered I could use that to display a random volunteer opportunity in the sidebar!

Otherwise some minor CSS editing and I was done. One neat thing I would check out – is how the Cutline them allows you to use a ‘custom’ CSS file so that you can customize your theme – without altering the original files. Then if you upgrade the them – you will not have to worry about overwriting the modified CSS.

I’ve been digging around trying to find a new theme – something I can hack on… So if you see anything broken – don’t worry about it! :) There are almost too many WordPress themes out there – picking one is difficult.

I’ve been messing around with displaying ads on the site recently. I have no hopes of getting rich – just curious how they work and wanted to test out the various services available. If ads would cover my hosting costs I’d be happy.

Currently I have a few Google AdSense things running. These were easy to setup – Google provides a helpful interface and you end up with snippets of code that you place on your site. Using Wordpress widgets – this was trivial.

I’ve also heard good things about Text Link Ads and decided to try them out last week. Their interface is nice – I don’t think it is as user friendly as Google but it works. So I setup my account – submitted my site and unlike Google – they provide a Wordpress plugin you can download – which activates a widget with a snippet of code in it. :)

While you are setting up your site – they have an “Editorial Approval System” in order for you to approve ads that will be placed on your site:

Approval System A
Allow TLA to editorial approve advertisers to your website. Reminder: TLA will not publish any adult, pharmacy, gambling or any site we feel is inappropriate.

Approval System B
Receive an email notification every time an advertiser purchases a link off your website and have the ability to reject that advertiser. If advertiser approves the ad then the ad is immediately placed. If we do not hear back from you in 24 hours the ad will be reviewed by our TLA editors.

I selected System A since as long as it wasn’t porn I didn’t really care what they put on the site.

I waited a few days and then got an email stating someone had purchased ad space on my site! So I clicked over to my site, noticed the link, clicked it and OMG – it’s a porn site!

&$#@^$%@*

So I immediately disabled the widget, and then fired off a rather terse email to Text Link Ads. Over 12 hours later I get this reply:

Jim, sorry about that. This has been removed.

Nice. Thanks. But I’ve re-enabled the widget and switched my approval system to System B.

I just wanted to post this in case anyone else was considering using this service. System B is still problematic – if I’m on vacation when they email me about an ad – they still may skip my approval and post an ad to my site if I don’t respond.