Website 19 Development Kick-Off

Posted October 15, 2006, 6:59 p.m.

On Thursday, the Joomla project (the content management system that powers this site) released the first beta of Joomla 1.5. I would have called it Joomla 2.0, personally, because 1.5 is a major rewrite of the CMS code-base. To implement it on my site will require quite a bit of work, but that’s okay because I had big things planned for Website 19 anyway.

I’ve hinted in the past at some changes to the focus of this website, and have made a number of subtle changes to its navigation structure and trashed a lot of old/outdated content in an effort to tweak and adjust it in the direction I’m going. I also had planned a number of technological changes for Website 18, but put them off when I realized it would be better to tie those changes in with the Joomla 1.5 upgrade and a later version of the site.

So, the long and short of it is that I’m going to make a lot of changes for Website 19 and the Joomla 1.5 system. I’m beginning early work on it right now, though I don’t expect it to go ‘live’ for at least a few months. Everything is on the table—the organization, features, the look, and more—so Off on a Tangent may look very different when I’m done. It could potentially be a bigger shift than the initial move to the Mambo/Joomla system in the first place.

But I’d like some input. What do you like and dislike about Off on a Tangent, how can I make it better, and what features have you seen elsewhere that you’d like to see here? Already under consideration is implementation of a full-fledged interactive forum system, which would replace the existing comment function and encourage/allow more robust discussion of the topics and articles on the site (and allow users to begin new topics).

Let me know what you think!

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.

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Scott Bradford