A new start.

After much thought I took the site down, I had been working on a new layout and graphics for the !Joomla version of the site.
I had come to the conclusion that the format it was in would not allow for site expansion and modification in the future, so I made the hard decision to start again from scratch , this time I would use Drupal,

I knew that initially I would not be able to implement all the features I wanted as easily with Drupal, but the Drupal CMS design would let me leverage some more powerful tools as I became more experienced.
I stripped back all the features from the !Joomla site, disabled comments and new user registration, I then created a backup of the database and uploaded what I had completed of the newer version. I was going to leave that up so users could still browse the listings while I worked on the new Drupal based site.

  I spent over 6 days trying to figure out Drupal before I even created my first piece of content on my local host test server. I didn't update the listings or add new content to the online site.
I logged in to the !Joomla site and checked the stats after 2 weeks. Now that I had stopped updating the site the spiders came less frequently . The users had also trailed off. The average daily unique visitors had dropped back down to 10.
It was taking longer than I had hoped to create the new design and after a few more weeks the site was dead.

I persevered with Drupal learning more about it as time passed. I created content, added modules, removed modules , tested scripts and created basic content. The site on my local host does seem better than the !Joomla version, there is a more granular control over users and their rights. There is more functional freedom and options within Drupal but there is also more room for error once the site goes live. I will just have to remember the mantra "Back up, back up, back up."

I can always start again, for me it would not be a big deal, the web space isn't going anywhere and this is not a race.

If you have read the whole of this blog you would know that I didn't even know anything about CSS when I started.