Rusty…

I feel like I have been spinning my wheels for the last two weeks, trying to get things moving in a forward direction.  I feel like a rusty old car, pathetically trying to race down the speedway.  Although it may not seem like it, I really have accomplished quite a bit:

• I read through all my blog posts to see what I had already covered. Man, have I had some serious typos! So, I’m definitely going to try and be more diligent in that regard. I’d appreciate any comments that point out typos or errors; it won’t offend me, so please speak up if you see something.
• The About Me page has been updated here on my blog. Go check it out, there’s a picture of my kiddos there too! =)
• I had already installed my own local server previously, so I have only really reviewed what I did before. I’d like to spend more time on this because my brief attempt and getting it running didn’t work. However, I just haven’t gone back to it for lack of time, so I’ll post more on that when I get around to it. I will say this, I did like the idea of having that as my workspace before going live with things. And if I recall correctly, I had used it quite a bit for adding my extensions on my last go of things.
• Created a new domain for my family site and got Joomla! installed. I was having trouble getting Joomla! to work the first time I installed it and couldn’t quite figure out what the problem was, however I decided to just have a “do-over” to see if I missed a step, and once I uninstalled and re-installed, it was working properly. No complaints here, I’m glad it is up and running now.
• I’ve done a lot of re-reading and researching again. I am quite rusty, so the review has been good for me.  The Lynda.com videos have been invaluable this time around as well. I’m not sure if I just didn’t pay as much attention previously, but they have really helped me get the content structure aspect to sink in a little better. (Not that this has completely sunk in, but I’m getting there.)
• My new site plan was a much easier experience this time around. I took my own advice from a previous post and used Microsoft’s SmartArt. It was a much easier process this time around; however, as you can see on The Plan, it isn’t quite as detailed as The Old Plan. Mostly because this site is going to be fairly less complex content-wise, but also for the sake of saving time since I have already done a very detailed site plan. (Throughout this process, twice now, I have found that setting up this outline and diagram is so very important. It has really helped me to envision the final product, yet also make some hard decisions about content and site organization. I really enjoyed the WebMonkey tutorial on Information Architecture. Yes, I said I enjoyed that…..I know, I feel the geek exuding from me and into this blog, I’ve accepted it!)
• I’ve started organizing some content on my site….well, fake content. I haven’t included much actual content, just titles and lots of “Lorem ipsum” for now. I want to get my structure more solidified first, then get the extensions up and running, and finally I’ll get the actual content on there. I’ll add some here and there as I go, as well. Hopefully by the end of next week, I’ll have most of this done.
• The research and decisions have been made for my extensions, but I’ll save that info for another post  =)

SO, as you can tell, I’ve been busy.  I do need to improve on posting here more often, so that you can hear my trials and tribulations as they come, rather than after the fact. I’ll work on that!

Much more to come, very soon!

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