NEWS: GP Moving To Content Management System

[Jamie]

This is to let you know that one of the things happening here at GP is that we are gradually moving to a new structure for our website, and indeed our business. We are slowly building a site with Joomla, a popular, open source content management system (actually, lightrock introduced me to it a number of years ago).

It will make many things possible for us as time goes on, one of which is the easy submission of content by those familiar with the principles, and who can extend and apply my work into the areas of their own specialty as time goes on.

Making this transition is exciting, but also challenging, and downright daunting! First of all, I only have so much time for site development in the midst of the million other things I do, second, I don't know what I am doing half (all?) the time, so it is learn as I go. I need to try to avoid losing all the links and google standings we have garnered over the years. I say this because urls may change.

You can visit what I have got so far here

http://www.guitarprinciples.com/cms/

It is a work in progress, and will be for about 2 years I think. It will take me that long to understand how to use this vastly different system for creating and administering a website. Any suggestions for our new site will be appreciated, any advice even more so!

I will be adding a video gallery for our student video submissions. Just doing that will take a lot of work, so everything will move slow, but will move forward, and make GP a better and stronger force for guitar advancement.

I will refer to this developing new site as "GP2", and your suggestions as to what shape and directions it might take are welcome!

[light_rock]

I wish I could just like win the lottery and retire, I'd love to help, but yeah, these technologies are time eaters.

Hopefully you do get some great out of the box functionality and traction and come across some excellent plug-ins.

Maybe late in the summer I'll have more time if you need it. ( it takes a while just to ramp up, I don't have a lot of handy quick answers other than recognizing a cool extensible and well supported platform after a bit of tinkering )

There is or was a book published on the architecture, may be in version 2 or greater by now...

[Jamie]

Yes, well I am studying a few books and plan to get it running at a basic functional level, and then go deeper with some more comprehensive books to study the full potential of the app - like using classes and prefixes and other stuff I see there but don't quite understand how to use yet.

In the midst of everything else I do, it is a good chance to practice the "art of not making myself crazy!!

But, let me know as soon as you retire (keep buying those lottery tickets!)

[AXE]

Hey Jamie,

I'm sure you have thought about that but ... why don't you handle this to a professional? You are not a professional web developer so it will take you more time and the result will still not be the best it can be. Guess it's due to financial problems. However I honestly feel that you should put your time in guitar teaching (in any form) - that's your calling (in case you haven't noticed it by now, I'm letting you know )

Anyway, I like the new system. It will surely make the site more useful and just more pleasant