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The past few nights, after the boys are finally sleeping, I have been working on The Reach's new website. We had a "Christian" web host before but I really actually hated it. It was very limiting from a web design standpoint and terribly difficult to use with its outdated UI*. So we finally made the move over to another host (for 1/8th the cost per month) where we have the freedom to make our website however we like.

The only downside of that is that I had never installed a Content Management System (CMS) before and there are a TON of open-source (read: free) CMS programs out there. Once I found one that I liked really well, I downloaded it and proceeded to try to install it on our server. This was almost a month ago. I failed miserably, since I had no idea what I was doing. Finally after finding some help on the forums and asking in IRC (internet relay chat) for some more help, and trying and failing and trying and finally getting it, the website is finally real. :)

So here it is, although it's not quite done, it's finally at a stage where it can be unveiled, like the Boeing 787... Pretty but note entirely assembled. Actually proportionately, we're farther along than the 787 was at its unveiling. Anyway, back to internet stuff...

We are using Lunarpages. They offer an excellent price on a great basic hosting package. They are out of New Zealand, I believe, but their web support is pretty quick at replying and ready to help. Plus nice, so that's a bonus.

The CMS we are using now is called Silverstripe. I'd only really used WordPress on a server, which was good for a blog but had to be modified so much to use it as a CMS substitute. Also they had upgrades like every five days. But it was a lot more easy to install and upgrade without much modification by hand at all.

Silverstripe is a lot more user friendly after it's set up, but the setup was a killer. I gave up twice, but I'm worse at quitting than I am at failing, so now it works. Which is good because there may be others using it to post contect to the website that are not nearly as patient and persistent as I am when it comes to webthings.

So if you know a thing or two about PHP (I don't really, so that's probably why it took so long) and FTP, I recommend Silverstripe for you. And I really recommend Lunarpages too.

...We now return you to your regular programming...



*user interface