The New MonkShack

It's been a long time coming...I've finally redesigned the MonkShack homepage (http://www.monkshack.com). Over the years, the site started as static HTML and gradually evolved in a database-driven, dynamic site that provided the front door to all of the sub-domains that maintain, including this one! My primary goal in this redesign to simplify the site followed closely by goals to improve navigation and increase the ability for monkshack.com to be a central linkage point for all of our web2.0 activities. The site is now table-free with the vast majority of the structure and formatting being done using CSS. I think I've met my goals, but I'm always interested in what other users think, so if you want to share your opinion, I'm all ears!

I continue to use GoDaddy as my hosting provider, despite their transparent attempts to use their adverstising to stir up controversy (thereby increasing discussion about GoDaddy). They've always been responsive in their customer service and I couldn't be happier with the suite of tools they provide to host and maintain my domains. I had what could only be described as an ancient installation of DotNetNuke (no, I won't say what version - its just too embarrassing!) that over many years and server changes was now residing on a separate server and was outside of my permissions. I don't even know how that happened...but it did. In my redesign process, I wanted to start from as clean a slate as possible, so that meant removing my old DNN installation (formerly housed at http://www.monkshack.com/community) and the associated databases. GoDaddy's technical support couldn't have been better about helping resolve the issue - even going so far as to contact me with a follow-up phone call before the directory was deleted to see if I needed a backup of all of the data that was housed on that site. (I'd backed up the entire already to a local server, but it was darn nice of them to ask!)

Even after the redesign, I felt that I wanted a web-enabled CMS for at least a part of the site, so I installed Joomla in place of the old DNN. Now I'm facing the difficult challenge of determine how much of the old site I want to put back - and how much is simply going to stay in the archives...