Server, Heal Thyself

I wish. I made the mistake of doing an update late this afternoon and ended up breaking the web server in the process. After an hour or so I managed to get it back up and working, but the end result is I need to change some things around to make updating/administration a bit easier. While I do this (and watch my new Lord of the Rings special extended edition!!), the site may be unavailable sporadically while I restart the web server.

Update
I’ve finished my server maintenence, so things should be stable again. On the plus side, I was able to finish some of the configurations I needed to setup the image gallery again, so I should start re-uploading pictures in a few days.

Migrating from Postnuke

First PHPNuke, then PostNuke, and now MoveableType. I’ve been using a “Content Management System” on this site for quite some time now. Recently, the PostNuke development team splintered, leaving only the original developer at the helm. While change is good, I know first hand that PostNuke is a large and complex system. One person alone cannot maintain it. It has too many moving parts, and having too many fingers in the pot for too long has made it difficult to manage even for a team of skilled programmers.

Second, I want to be able to run the site as a “blog”, “weblog”, or however you want to name it. I considered writing my own system but in the end I decided it would be counter-productive. My primary goal is to free up my time so I can devote it to writing. Spending countless hours writing the type of system I wanted, simple yet elegant, does not meet that goal. And that is where MT comes in. It does what I need, and has the flexibility for me to change the layout of the site fairly easily.

I haven’t decided what to do with the old content from the site. What I may do, for a time, is put up the old site so that it’s content can still be accessible. It may simply be too time-consuming to move over. This also gives me the opportunity to revamp parts of the site that I still want to maintain, such as the photo gallery.