This is an Epiphone ES 335 Dot in the cherry finish. Guess I’ll now have to learn Neil Diamond’s “Cherry Cherry” !

C-FWZZ

My site devoted to C-FWZZ, the Piper Aircraft Corporation PA-23-250-C “Aztec” that I was in care and control of for over 16 years, has just today been officially re-launched and is running on WordPress 3.2.1. Initially created in June of 2005 while I was in Quebec City, Quebec and in of all things, Microsoft FrontPage, it went through a few iterations over the years.

From the FrontPage version, I migrated it to a proper HTML/CSS site using Dreamweaver; then to Joomla!. And from Joomla! it went to Drupal and now it has found it’s home with WordPress. Check out my blog on GoodCheapFastWebSites.com for the lo down and rationale.

Oh get your mind out of the gutter; I’m talking about the recent trend in laptop screen design; the glossy glass screen; and yes they do suck in the sun; I am outside right now at B3 and trying to work on a post or two; gorgeous day, just a slight breeze to keep the bugs away, but severe clear; the only thing that I can see well on the screen is my reflection; great if I want to pluck my eyebrows, but damn near impossible to see what I am tying, let alone the cursor; guess it’s time to invest in one of those anti-glare covers; or do what I have seen others do – put there jacket, hoody or t-shirt over their head and screen; crude but effective; they most definitely provide for an extremely readable display in low light or indoors, but outside in the sun, the title of this post holds true; later;

<1730 – 160>

LyleChamney.com is now 100% WordPress 3.0. The conversion was a purely manual effort as I couldn’t use the Joomla To WordPress Migrator plugins because the databases were not on the same server. I have successfully used this plugin on local installations and it works like a charm. In reality though, in this case, it wouldn’t have done a lot of good anyway for the following reasons:

• I ended up reworking a lot of the content as it was high time to do so
• most of the conversion had to do with “add-ons”
• had to do comments manually anyway
• I needed the WordPress practice

This is the third site I have put up using WordPress 3.0 and I have to admit that I am a bona fide convert from Joomla! There are way too many things to list in this post that makes me feel this way and I shall do so in a subsequent one.

There remain many things for me to learn about WordPress as I have only had a cursory look in the past. My tool of choice for the last 2.5 years has been Joomla! with the odd dabbling in Drupal (which I also like quite a lot). However, from now on, WordPress has taken over that top spot on my web site building tool belt.

One thing else that I will briefly touch on here, and will expand on in detail later, is that this site is using a theme that I generated with an alpha release of Artisteer. This is a testing version of their WordPress 3.0 support and I have to say that I am very impressed. More on this in a future post.

LyleChamney.com has now been converted from my web and graphics design site to a personal site that will showcase some of my manual and digital artwork, among other things.

The web and graphics design, now including custom templates and themes for Joomla!, WordPress, Drupal, HTML and DotNetNuke using Artisteer, along with tips and getting started guides for Joomla!, are now available at www.2ninerniner2.com.

First go-around with the K2 extension from Joomlaworks has been successful. This is a very powerful and complex addition to the Joomla! developer’s arsenal and I have here only touched the surface of it’s remarkable capabilities. As I get more familiar with it, I will be extending the functionality of it on this site and reporting about what I have done in my Blog.

Additionally, the Joomla! template that is in use on this site was created with Artisteer and slightly modified from it’s native build. The tweaks that were made on it will be documented both here and on www.2ninerniner2.com shortly. As well, a few adjustments were made to the standard K2 stylesheet; these will be covered too.

The first iteration of LyleChamney.com  was created using Dreamweaver. I went through many versions but ended up never really getting it complete. Then Joomla! came along and the next version was built with that. Within the Joomla! version, I virtually rebuilt the content using the K2 extension from Joomlaworks.gr. And that is what it has been until now. What you see here is WordPress 3.0 and I have a hunch that it will be on this fine platform for quite some time.