I made some progress over the past couple days. You can now "like" my articles on your favorite social network, and you can now post your own comments to my articles and blog posts. I wish I had more time to devote to this project, but the world is not built on web sites alone! For now, my goal is to make one improvement to the site each day.
I'm also starting on a software project. A couple months ago, I did some research into task management software, since the facilities built into MS Outlook did not meet my needs. I found a couple that were workable, but neither was a perfect fit, and the price points were a little higher than I was willing to spend. Since I have some time on my hands, I decided I would go ahead and create my own. This should be fun.
Since my old server didn't support PHP 5, I took the leap today and began the migration to a new server. I set up a clean copy of the latest and greatest version of Joomla! and started setting it up. Of course, that means I have to set up everything from scratch again, but better now then sometime down the line when I have tons of content to migrate!
The first issue I discovered was that the new version of Joomla! does not come with a theme similar to the one I was using in the old version, so my first task was to find a theme that would work for me. What you see is what I found. I will probably tweak it; I'm not all that crazy about the faded red menu titles, for example. Not a big deal, it is far easier to make a few tweaks than it is to design a theme template from scratch.
Of greater concern is the fact that the blogging component I found for the old version is not compatible with the new version. So, for now I'm using the plain vanilla blogging capability of Joomla! Tomorrow I will look for a decent blogging component for this version. If I don't find one, who knows, maybe I'll try my hand at updating the one from the old version.
On December 6, 2011, I decided to rebuild my web site from the ground up. I archived all my content, where it will likely remain for future archaeologists to dig up and scratch their heads about. The only thing I did not change was the foundation on which my site is built - Joomla! Actually, I archived Joomla! too, and then re-installed it from scratch, including all the sample material that comes with it, which is all about (drum roll please)... Joomla! So, if you are one of the lucky people to visit my new site during the makeover, you are seeing a lot of references to Joomla!, and you''re probably wondering, "What the heck is Joomla!?"