Time For Change

Time For Change

The Hobbyist Machine Shop website has served well on the Internet as encouragement for new home machinist getting started in the hobby. The ton of email (if it could be weighed) sent to me confirms this statement.

The web site was built through the years with several HTML editing tools. First was HoTMetaL Pro which many years ago went out of existence. I switched to Adobe GoLive and then to Macromedia Dreamweaver. Adobe purchased Macromedia and there was an inside battle between GoLive and Dreamweaver as to which program would be Adobe’s HTML flagship.  Dreamweaver won out and is still my WYSIWYG HTML editor.

HTML5 is the newest version of HTML, created to do battle mostly against Adobe Flash. Adobe counters with Adobe Edge, a new HTML5 animation editor. I don’t do much direct FLASH editing so HTML5 is not a big deal with me (yet).

I’m getting off track, back to my story. I have been using a freeware CMS (Content Management System) web publishing tool known as Joomla. It is a graphic intensive creative and web display product written in PHP . With today’s high speed backbone and much faster user computer systems this high overhead system has been working well for me on many web sites I manage. It stores information in a MySQL database and builds the pages dynamically. Enough black magic, it just works.

Joomla and all CMS systems have a very good “back end” management system that doesn’t exist with standard HTML web sites. It is much easier to maintain all the information in a standard form. This THMS BLOG website (using WordPress and my own template) is a CMS system and works in very much the same way as Joomla.

My secret weapon to building CMS templates is Artisteer.

Bottom line, my website formatting (how it looks) has improved many times over what I can do just in HTML. I am creating the best looking web sites (and blogs) I have ever published.

Within the next month I will use Joomla to build a new platform for The Hobbyist Machine Shop. The old pages will remain and will be linked. Nothing will be intentionally removed. I think it may not be practical to convert all the old material to the new, but I will be examining what is possible.

Watch for the change, and oh yeah… The Hobbyist Work Shop is already a Joomla site.