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by Dan Veaner
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Friday, 06 July 2007 |
 This being a holiday week, I decided to take on a challenge. I have been meaning to upgrade the back end of the Star for some time now, but have been afraid to tackle it for fear of inadvertently doing something inexplicable and damaging to the site. As with most computer technology, the system we use has seen significant improvements over our two years of publication. And it was getting to the point where I felt we could offer better features if I moved up.
We use a system on our site called a Content Management System (CMS). The great thing about a CMS is that it handles the format of the site so all you have to do is put in the content. In plain English that means each week I write stories, paste them into the CMS, and it displays the Star to you. I don't normally have to worry about technical things -- html, php, server side includes -- I just write stuff and paste it in.
The CMS we used is called Mambo. But soon after we committed to it and customized it to do everything we wanted the Star to do the Mambo developers got mad at the owners and split off to create their own CMS, which they called Joomla. Most of the Mambo community seems to have sympathized with these developers and switched their Web sites from Mambo to Joomla in droves.
New features are now possible, making it easier for you to find stories that interest you. The result is that the developers of add-on modules and components also rushed to support Joomla, and as the two systems diverge fewer are supporting Mambo.
Some of these features are things that could make the Star easier to use, more organized and informative, and that is why I wanted to switch.
But that meant making sure that every change I made to Mambo was documented (it turned out that all but one was) so I could duplicate those changes in Joomla. And that was not an experiment I wanted to try cold on our live site!
So I created a duplicate of the Star, something people wouldn't actually go to. My plan was that if I could convert the duplicate without any problems I would then convert the live site. I nervously changed some files, spent hours uploading a copy of the old system, and by Monday I was ready to try it on the mirror site. I uploaded the new system, and to my amazement it worked! There were a few adjustments I needed to make, but the upshot was that by 2pm Monday I was poised to update the actual Lansing Star site.
I took the site offline while I uploaded some important core files, which only took a few minutes. Then I uploaded the rest, checking the site along the way to make sure it was still working. Once that was done I had to make some adjustments to the administrative interface, and by 5pm or so I was done. Then I let out my breath, which I had been holding for three hours!
I have to admit I love the back-end technical stuff, and it sometimes distracts me from gathering the news. But the bottom line is that it makes the Star available to you in an accessible way, and makes it possible for me to spend most of my time interviewing, gathering news, and writing it. That even means I get some time off every once in a while!
So while I am still basking in my upgrade success, I am getting back to writing news stories. But my techie-geek interlude will mean that we can bring you better formats and features of our on-line newspaper well into the future. And as for being distracted, well I did write this about it, killing two birds with one stone!
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v3i25
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