Bald is beautiful...

... and it's a good thing. Because I've been pulling my hair out trying to get the web site just so. It still has a long way to go, but it's come a long way in a short time.

We now have:

-An intro page.

-An interactive main site with profiles, private messaging, etc.

-An upgraded forum (from phpbb2 to phpbb3) which is a "slave" to the main site, meaning that only one login is necessary to access both.

-An online calendar for birthdays, anniversaries and special events.

-A members only chat room.

To get to this point there was a lot that had to be done behind the scenes, much of which is invisible to viewers. For instance, I had to install a special component to allow me to embed video on the site and several others for other reasons. The avatar gallery had to be reinstalled on the forum and the smilies had to be formatted. We also had some issues both with logins and user permissions (reading, replying, etc) on the forum which have been rectified-- or so I believe for the moment!

I am still trying to get the "quick reply" function working on the forum. I completed all the steps for installation-- including some PHP file editing that I'm not particularly comfortable with-- and I can see some evidence of my work on the back end but nothing shows up on the forum. So I've missed a connection of the moving parts somewhere and I still need to get that up and running. Also, I need to find a way to edit the flood interval setting for the chat room. If you type an entry too quickly after a previous one, not only will the chat room reject it, but YOU with it. That needs to be fixed.

I had hoped to have every little detail attended to before I start class tomorrow. And though I failed to accomplish that, I do feel good about what's been done thus far and I see progress. It's a step in the right direction!

usmcwives.com: Progress in millimeters.

"Success usuallly comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it." - Henry David Thoreau

I have come to the conclusion during the re-design that even if progress only comes in very small increments, it's still progress! And I will embrace every step that leads in the right direction.

With that in mind, the page is slowly but surely getting better. A lot of the time I have spent hasn't yielded any visible results but has improved the administrative capabilities of the sight or given me leads on utilities that can be added in. My biggest desire at present is to find a way to bridge the site and forum so that 1 user login will suffice for both the forum and the main site. This would be unnecessary except that the site offers a lot of bells and whistles (user profiles and the like) that would benefit us. New user registration on the site's main page is disabled (with member registration only possible on the forum) until this gap can be bridged. Duplicate accounts/logins would not be efficient. I have found a couple of options that it's remotely possible for me to use, but the technical elements of the installation process frighten me just a bit. I am, after all, self trained and not skilled in the technical arena. But we shall see!

New additions to the page include links to our forum, blog and survey as well as RSS feeds for the blog and for news articles from Marines.mil.

It looks like this at present:

http://www.usmcwives.com/Joomla

usmcwives.com: Splat.

There's one thing that never fails to hold true: When trial and error are involved in a process... you have to deal with the "error" portion.

All I managed to accomplish yesterday on the web site was to somehow undo something I had already done. I can't, for the life of me, figure out what I did or how to fix it yet. But I WILL!

I've somehow fouled up the linkage between the login section and the page one is redirected to upon login. I have looked it it from eighteen different angles and have even done a screen to screen comparison with Emily's control panel. I can spot the differences but am unsure how to correct them. Yet.

Web site go boom?

Nah. I'll get it fixed. I just have to step away from the keyboard, do something else for a bit and come back to it. I'm still very motivated about how the finished product will turn out. Stand by!

usmcwives.com: Re-design infancy.

I am attempting to re-design our site. I will get this done and I'm hoping the finished product will be clean, user friendly and pretty. I will accept nothing less for an end result!!

My experience level at this point is in the novice range. I know just enough to tweak something that already exists. This is why I think I might maximize my abilities by using Joomla. I was already aware of its existence but hesitant to delve into it until my friend, Emily, encouraged me by (1) telling me of her own experiences with it (2) generously offering to give me access to her site's files/settings so I could get a frame of reference and (3) making a very nice site with it herself (A Military Life.com).

So, off I go, then, to create genius while relying on the underlying technical skills of the development community!

I have selected a template-- after hours of indecision-- and am beginning to tweak it. Who knows, within the next couple of days I may even figure out how to remove all references to "Landscape Smart" (the template title) from the page! Stranger things have happened.....

Here's the equivalent of a fetal ultrasound for our baby:

What are YOU bringing to the table?

As I sit here on Saturday afternoon not having been very productive today, I'm thinking about wasted time.

Now, I have a bit of an excuse today. Yesterday I helped my husband with some manual labor on a fence we are building (when I say "we" I mostly mean HIM with some moral support from yours truly) for our backyard. It turns out, when an out of shape 33 year old woman bends, stoops and reaches for 5 hours, she suffers consequences the next day. It's not altogether dignified! My back is killing me and I have sore muscles in places I didn't realize were there. Despite this, I managed to get out there by myself and do some more painting for about an hour and a half. The intended result of feeling accomplished and perhaps even working out my muscle aches was NOT achieved. This may be due to the sheer volume of work left to do and my lack of motivation to do it or maybe it's just because I'm tired. Either way, I didn't feel validated by the work and, adding insult to injury, this was my greatest accomplishment of the day!

I don't know if it's the summer heat or my schedule having been disrupted for weeks because my family and I went on an extended trip.... or what. But I've been about as useful as a duck in a bucket a month or so now. And the madness has to stop. I usually have much to offer-- be it here on the home front or with the web sites or just as a friend-- but I have lost my mojo.

Always, always bring something to the table. No matter what or whom you are dealing with. Be worthy of your place and of others' care and time. This is important. And starting right now I am going to get back to my essence and start getting things done.

Mama's got to TCB!