So finally I did it.
Bro and I have been talking about this for ages -to make a personal website for him.
Last week I decided – before they shut down the Internet -we might as well do something while we have a chance.
The Prelude:
I have worked on web technologies for the last 9 years or so and consider myself quite savvy with “whats out there”
Having worked mostly on enterprise applications only till now- this is first time – I am making a website targeted towards an everyday web user: Someone who uses web for fun or to discover and not because that’s his job
And that makes a difference- quite a bit of difference I think.
The vision:
There were couple of things that I knew immediately that I want to do
A Blog : Where Sanjeev can share his thoughts and ideas
A forum: Something where everyone can participate.This would make the site self-sustaining.
And then the usual hang-ons: About,Disclaimer,Contact us etc.
I wasn’t looking for something real fancy to start with- but wanted it to look professional and neat.
The domain name :
For now we are using the name that we already have- sanjeevnarula.com. If Sanjeev wants we will get additional domain as well- but that’s trivial
The Hosting:
I wanted to start on a modest budget.But once I realized that its possible to host multiple sites on a single hosting- I was glad
I wanted to host this site as well – so that was neat
The Technology:
Hmmm
This was tricky.
I didn’t want to start with something grandeur like RoR or Grails or Spring
Something that could get running quick and fast.
I started looking at PhP- installed apache server, made a page or two
It was good- but I wanted something quick
Sudhir (owner of chalowalkin.com – a very innovative site on job) introduced me to wordpress. I was quickly sold to the idea of making my website on wordpress.
Then the forums… I tried PHPBB2 and SFM- both looked good
But it soon became obvious that I needed a CMS
Developing the Blog and Forum using different scripts would mean
- Extra effort to make the site look seamless
- Find a way to manage users across modules.
The two CMS I seriously considered were Drupal and Joomla
I finally settled for Drupal
The final product
Drupal is a neat system.Infact it’s more of an engine to make sites
Few clicks here and there and trials- and I was done.
Time taken:
The design: 1 hour
Selecting the Host: 4 hours
Experimenting and deciding: 12 hours
Making the final site on Drupal: 6 hours
Finishing touches: 2 hours
And so now I invite you to come and pay Sanjeev a visit on his new home on the web.
sanjeevnarula.com
Recent Comments