The site is back up.

It took me a while but I got the site back up and its running on Drupal. I haven't had the opportunity to optimize it yet so it may run a little slow. Luckily my current lack of traffic will allow me to fix up some loose ends.

So what now ? I guess I get to do it all again, slim down the java script, reduce the size of images, resubmit site maps, configure meta data etc.

The site is up, most of the scripts seem to work and the logs show no serious errors.

Actually there is only one error that appears when the site is set to maintenance mode. Something is calling my theme folder as a CSS file so the system reports the CSS file missing. I can't track it down, it may just be a permission error due to the maintenance mode.

Had a bit of luck, last week I received an email from Google with a coupon code for $75 worth of free adwords (Free is good). I'll set that up later today after setting up my open search. It should help with the effort to rebuild the site.

It took longer than I expected to transfer the site from my local-host and get it configured correctly. Drupal isn't really user friendly in this reguard. Many of the configured links broke completely after the transfer. It was mostly due to my inexperience with Drupal and the way relative links are handled (not handled would be more accurate).

Reconfiguring the broken links did inspire me to modify the file structure so that the content files and modules were all in one place. This will make the site more portable in future so that was a bonus.

So this is the status report:

• Site is up, no real errors.
• Ad-server set up in a rudimentary fashion ( I haven't spent much time looking at it)
• A few features have been added with the upgrade: forum, vote system, user submissions.
• Not all the features are enabled yet, and the ones that are I am worried about.
• Backed up the database and all the files.

Over the next few weeks I am going to try and build up the traffic and slim down the scripts , code and images.

Tools I have found useful so far are Smush.it for image size reduction and this page for CSS / java-script compression.

Drupal performs some of its own Css optimizations but it leaves out some of the Module CSS files so I will reduce their size manually.

First before I do that I should add some more product listings, the first will be this keyboard I am using right now. I swear it's the most uncomfortable piece of rubbish I have ever owned. The shape means I keep hitting the caps lock instead of shift....grumble grumble,,,

Damn ergonomic .. mumble