“Instant web site?”

In the midst of bringing the first public revision of flyGarmin to a close at work, a friend emailed me and asked if I could whip up an “instant web site” as his new startup company was about to get national attention. I had a week.

So I worked a normal busy day every day that week, and every night I came home and worked on the new site, kept company by my bride and my new John Adams DVDs. It went like this:

First weekend
Assess and install content management system (CMS) packages (Drupal, Joomla, etc.)
Monday
Meet and plan; project actually starts
Tuesday
Planning with pencil and paper… no touching the computer until I had a perfectly clear plan
Wednesday
Build the XHTML and CSS framework
Thursday
Fill in the templates images and colors
Friday
Final touches to template and custom javascript enhancements
Saturday
Install Drupal onto live server; convert template to Drupal; learn to hate Drupal; install Joomla onto live server; convert template to Joomla; learn to use Joomla
Sunday
Finish polishing Joomla template; add all content, images, and video
Live Monday AM!

It was quite a week, but we got a pretty nice site out of the deal. And the great part was that I was able to make it client-maintainable right from the beginning. Open source is the coolest. I know that folks who love Drupal really love it, and I can tell it’s really powerful, but it just wasn’t “jump-in” intuitive like Joomla.

Oh, the site… weathernation.net. :)

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