I was not happy....
I was not happy with the look of my build site and reading this thread prompted me to do something about it. The old site was based on a free template that was offered by One.com, with whom I have registered my domain name and who provide 3Gb of space for around €15 (Euros) per year. Thats about $20. The old site used static HTML pages to display content and the style (look and feel) configuration was held in stylesheets.
I wanted something that was a bit more personalised. I use a Linux based laptop loaded with Ubuntu. All the basic elements and tools for web design are available in this laptop. That is Linux, Apache, MySQL and PhP. This is known as LAMP architecture. What I also needed was a content management system.
The Internet is a wonderful place and free Open Source software is the icing on the cake. After a search through available Open Source content management systems I found WordPress. So, I set up a MySQL database on my laptop downloaded WordPress and got to work. The results are here:
Anthony's RV-3B
Here is the old site for comparison:
Anthony's Old Site
WordPress has thousands of website templates to choose from. The hardest part of this exercise was choosing a template that I liked. I personally like fairly simple styles that do not detract from the content. I hate black backgrounds and garish colours. The header was a slight issue as it was originally to bland, so I made up a collage of photographs using Shape Collage, which is also available for free. All the pages that can be seen are dynamic pages. That is they are constructed using PhP scripts (bits of programing) and the content is stored in the MySQL database. The MySQL database also stores a whole other bunch of configuration stuff.
The usual categories are there on the new site, such as Workshop, Empennage, Wings, Firewall Forward etc. These categories are not displayed unless there is a post assigned to them. There is also a spell checker, similar to that what is available on VAF when writing posts. I must say that I do not correct any spelling such as "colour" instead of color or "personalise" instead of personalize.
Let me have your feedback on my new site. If you like what I have developed, I might be even be persuaded to help set up other websites as long as it does not take me away from building my RV-3.