YEAH! After much tweaking and code rewriting to properly port from my windows box to HE‘s Linux box, THE SITE IS LIVE AND ACTIVE!!! A labor of love finally complete. A real home on the web. We’re not hitch-hiking anymore… WE’RE RIDING!!!

So, go click around. You’re right — ultimately it’s not much different. Aside from the fact that I have converted most of the pages to PHP to make management a bit easier. The whole thing is also sitting on top of my burgeoning PHP site management suite. So far, it just handles the user info stuff (which will become more useful when I get the message board up and running) and sponsorship rotation, but I’m currently writing extensions so that it will also be a content management suite. I’m debating whether or not to open source it when I’m done, primarilt because I’m afraid it will get lost in the maelstrom of other wannabe CMS programs out there. Which begs the question, “Why are you writing one from scratch?” Two reasons: 1) total control over how the whole thing works without having to muck around with someone else’s code and 2) it’s been a REALLY good coding exercise. Since I’m still unemployed, this helps keep my dev chops sharp.

So, go mess around for a while and see what you see. And, when you’re done, drop me a line to let me know what you think.

Have fun!