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| Posted: Sat Oct 13th, 2007 02:30 pm |
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1st Post |
javal1
Grumpy Geezer
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Folks,
I wanted to fill everyone in on what's happening behind the scenes at CWi, what it means for the future, and how we're going to get there. This will not be news to trivia players, since I've sort of been keeping them updated, but for the rest of you:
CWi began in January, 1996 (only 6 months after Amazon began!). From that day to this, we have been using a program called "Microsoft Front Page" to build and update the site. Frontpage has one big advantage - it's easy, allowing us to concentrate on content without getting too bogged down in the coding aspect.
Unfortunately, it has many disadvatages. It produces sloppy, non-compliant code. It keeps us "Stupid" as far as learning the basics of hand-coding. There are others, but the biggest drawback - and the one causing this post - is the fact that it requires something called "Frontpage Extensions" to be installed and supported on the servers end. Without them - no Frontpage.
What started the current crisis is the fact that Microsoft has announced that as of January 15th, they will no longer support Frontpage extensions. That means servers, including ours, will remove them since they'll become a security risk because MS will not be issuing patches, etc. for them. So what does this mean for us?
The short of it is that we have to do the following:
- Decide on a replacement developing platform. We have decided to go with Microsoft Web Expressions (WE). WE is the "replacement program for Frontpage but isn't anything like Frontpage at all. It's an in-depth program which produces clean code, follows standards, and adds capabilities beyond our wildest dreams. The bad part is we have to learn things we know nothing about including: creating CSS code; creating XML code; creating ASP code; and lots of other stuff.
- Buy a new computer that will run this and all the other programs (spreadsheets, graphics, databases) we use at the same time. (Done)
- Find a new server that will run and support the various components required by the new software (ASP 2.0, NET 2.0, Windows 2005 server or later). (Done)
- Then the biggie - on the new server, I have to totally rebuild Civil War Interactive from scratch - every page, every article, every recipe, every everything. Many don't realize that CWi consists of over 1300 pages. They all have to be re-built one by one. (Begun)
- When all that's done, we'll point the domain name to the new server and *poof* you'll be seeing the new site!
Now here's the part that makes me laugh hysterically, sometimes maniacally and sometimes at 2,3 or 4 in the morning: I have about 90 days to do it!!
So why bore you with all of this? A few reasons. First, to let you know that we're constantly trying to improve CWi, and let you know big things are coming. Second, to let you know that we're working 16-20 hours a day on this, so if we're slow in answering PM's or e-mails, that's why. Lastly to let you know that this is costing us a bundle, and that we'll soon be running a donation drive which we hope all of you will participate in.
So exciting times lie ahead as we jump into the Web 2.0 world, and we appreciate all of you sticking with us. Sorry this turned into such a long post. Guess I better get back to work 
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| Posted: Wed Oct 17th, 2007 04:49 pm |
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2nd Post |
TimHoffman01
Member
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Hey, Javal,
I haven't done any research into this myself, yet, but have you contacted MS to see if they have any utilities that will allow you to port content from one system (FrontPage) to the other? Seems to me they have a LOT of folks out there who have made professional pages on FrontPage and would really rather not redo everything from scratch.
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| Posted: Thu Oct 18th, 2007 02:08 pm |
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3rd Post |
javal1
Grumpy Geezer
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Hi Tim,
The problem with that is the fact that the FrontPage code is so sloppy, we'd just be copying the sloppiness from one site to another. In addition, many of the features (such as database connections) depend on the Frontpage extensions, which will soon stop working.
It's going a little faster than I expected. We've completed rebuilding of the documents section, the articles section, trivia page, and much of the cookbook section. Think we'll get it done, but figuring out how to configure the databases with the new software is proving challenging. Thanks for your input.
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