So I started the task of rebuilding my personal web sites a couple of weeks ago. The issue wasn't so much the content more the design so that always makes life easier. It content that's always the harder bit, finding things that fit together and grouping them in the right way, This site (Techietone) was the first to be rebuilt. I have added some new features, like personal rating on the resources and a contact form but the main difference other than moving over to using blogger is the Forum, I have used a third party bit of software for this because although I could write it myself why reinvent something that's already out there and working really well. the application is pretty easy to configure and I will be producing a How to for MySql soon. The system is ASP based and therefore you need a host that will allow ASP. Anyway if you want to check it out for yourself here is the site http://forum.snitz.com/. they have a great forum themselves for asking question but if you have a question feel free to ask me.
My next two challenges that I had was for the family web site, Nikki (my dear wife) is in charge of content on this one so I mainly worry about the technical side of stuff and trying to meet Nikki's requirements what makes it fun at times, there was two main reasons for changing the Photo Gallery, the first from a technical point of view was that the present one is Perl based and although I love Perl I love standards more and the web server that the site is running on is primary a ASP server so I wanted to remove all the Perl applications so I could remove Perl. Again I could have written it myself using ASP and MySql but firstly I couldn't be arsed to design it and then write it, secondly I wanted to avoid a database system because we have a lot of photo's and the thought of importing all the URL's or actual pictures sent a shiver down my spine. the second reason behind replacing it is that Nikki hated the way it organized the pictures on a very simple by album name method. So it had to go we are placing it with ASP Online Photo Album, The basics are very easy to set up, some of the graphics used was a little crap but easy to replace, This is generally a good system and easy to create a great looking web site, be aware thou even thou most of it is classic ASP there is one module that uses ASP.NET so you need a host that supports ASP.net (these days if the support ASP they generally support ASP.net).
what bring me on to my last challenge what's far from sorted but I thought I would let you know what I have found so far, Nikki would like an MP3 Player on our web site, she got the idea from Facebook and well as we have a complete section on music it seems like a good idea. The first system I looked at was amazing and I might still implement it for personal uses in a secured environment. its called One Web MP3 Server its still in beta but wow this is a fully functioning MP3 server that allows you to listen to your music from anywhere you have a web connection and a browser. you can create play lists and search you music collection. but great as it was it was so over the top for what we wanted and would have been hard to integrate into the rest of the site. So I kept looking and that's when I found these people codefuse they have 9 different styled Flash Mp3 players that are very simple to use and work using a simple XML file to list the mp3's. this is the system I am working on implementing at the moment, I let you know how it goes. so here are all those links again
http://forum.snitz.com/ for the Forum
ASP Online Photo Album for the photo Album
One Web MP3 Server for the Mp3 Server
codefuse for the mp3 player
Hopefully you find this stuff handy
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