For those of you who have followed this site, you noticed that there was a period where I was quiet. There were no new articles or tweets. The reason was because I needed to move this site to another hosting company. I had outgrown my previous web host and they didn’t have a server plan between what I had and a dedicated server. I erred in thinking there was another service plan. That was the immediate problem as I was using too much bandwidth per my contract.

The second problem was the content management system (CMS) I use needed an upgrade. Prior to this project, I had been upgrading to the newer version. Fortunately, this project had started prior to my capacity problem. I was also using another web host. This gave me some flexibility.

Sadly, this CMS upgrade isn’t like going from Word 2003 to Word 2007. Instead, it required a lot of infrastructure changes. Modules that worked with the current CMS didn’t work in the new one without modifications. One example was I had to adjust 300+ images and there wasn’t a programmatic way to do this.

The main goal was to get up and running. I wasn’t looking for the site to be 100% operational when I cut over. Perfection would take too long and wouldn’t be fair to my previous web host. They were very accommodating and professional throughout this ordeal. In fact, I still host the nonprofit site with them.

Site Changes

I have a new template which bumped up the font size a bit and made the headings more uniform. This template doesn’t have buttons to increase or decrease the fonts, but you can still do that using your browser. I still have more changes to make to the template such as creating buttons and styles for printed pages.

The Daily Quote and Random Tip modules are still present, but need to be expanded. I found new modules, but I need to convert several hundred tips and quotes. I’ll probably outsource that part as it’s not the best use of my time to convert them.

The two biggest changes you’ll see is the change in the Site Search. Instead of using the Google Custom Search, I’m using a new provider called Lijit. I’d be interested in what you think.

The other change is I don’t have the “Sites We Like” section back up. It too was another area that requires infrastructure changes. If you’re looking for a resource page I listed, let me know and I can query the database.