Well, every few years I do a major update to Billikens.com, and this weekend I did probably the biggest ever since moving to the Billikens.com domain in 1997.
My site used to be a bunch of linked static web pages. Pretty much if there is a new technology for web design, Billikens.com is always about two years behind it. This time round, I am abusing the hell out of RSS feeds to make Billikens.com the place to get Billikens news. I am pulling from a couple blogs, Yahoo’s News feed, SLU’s Press Releases, and more. It is a little ridiculous. I was able to accumulate over 100 SLU news stories from the month of June. Now, there is little need to go anywhere else to get Billikens news.
The design itself I am not thrilled with, but it is good to get a fresh face every once and a while. Also it forced me to start using CSS and PHP instead of using about 20 SSI includes throughout the site creating a rag tag CMS. Now I am using Drupal, one of the most powerful content management systems out there. However, the sucker is not easy. I spent 13 hours Saturday trying to figure out how Drupal messed up the cookies on my forum. I think it was a combination of a few things. But somehow a Drupal .htaccess file got above the Billikens.com root directory. I did not spot that sucker until Sunday morning. Boy was yesterday frustrating…but it is how it goes. The forum seems to be working now, but it will get its real test tomorrow when people try to login at work. There is also editing BillikenBlog and getting new forum software on the horizon. But the real heavy lift is done…I hope.
Tonight talking to Sue I put thoughts together nicely. Tech is my hobby. I would hate having it be my 9 – 5 full time job. However running Billikens.com gives me an outlet for it. I am forced to keep learning (no matter how many years behind) because to keep the baby alive, I gotta put work into it.