5 years ago, when Greg and I decided to purchase back the mightorindustries.net domain, we were all excited about having our own hosting again. Just think, the things we could do. It was so much cheaper and still is, than it was when we took our first stab at owning our own domain and having unlimited hosting. We dont have unlimited hosting now, by the way. We do have enough hosting resources to accomplish the things we’d like to.
However, being complicated as life can be, other things took precedence and we kind of let the site fall way to the back burner. In fact, it had gotten to the point where even our trusty forum had almost been left in the dust. Quite frankly, I was about to disable the thing and remove it from the site, because of the lack of inactivity (Sorry Greg).
It was about a week ago when Greg and I started talking about some things we’d both like to do with the website. One of the things I think he and I are both happy about is how far technology has come in the last 10 years. When we first started doing this thing, you didnt have database servers freely available to you. You didnt have content management systems that would allow you a little bit of focus on the design every so often and a lot of focus on the content. We had discussed back then about having an “update tool”, a facility that would allow us to update the websites we were working with without having to re-create another HTML page and go through the code. Heaven forbid you found an error in the HTML that all of the other HTML pages had. Or wanted to update a link! 6 hours later you were deep into updating all of your webpages and by the time that was completed, you didnt want to screw around with the content. Nowadays, we have content management systems….tons of them, that will let you manage just about any type of content you can get your hands on. Now the decision…which one? Well, we decided that we’d give WordPress a try for the main site, because the type of content we intend to publish on the main site, which is simply text. Updates, articles, etc.
So the gist of this story is: we’re back. We’re updating again. Possibly even every day. You’ll also notice a new layout. We’re back to the black, white and gray (which we used about 10 years ago). For those of you picky enough to notice, there are still a few bugs in the layout, but as far as I can tell over the last couple of days, I dont think its make or break. I intend to keep playing with it over the next couple of weeks, as my CSS is a little fuzzy (been about a year and a half since I seriously looked at it). You’ll notice a login screen in the sidebar. Im afraid that doesnt do you, as a user, much good at this time. Our intention is to get the user accounts from the forum integrated into WordPress. Once we do, you’ll be able to log in from here, and go directly to the forum.
Speaking of the forum, it’s still there. Greg and I have been posting stuff back and forth over the last couple of days (which is about all of the activity it gets anymore). Feel free to take a look to see what we’ve done historically. You’ll notice the design is a bit different than the main page. That’s my next big task, is to integrate the design of the forum with the main site so they flow. You can visit the forum here (will open in a new window/tab) or click the Forums link in the sidebar. It’s a work in progress, considering the lack of time. But to be honest, thanks to the efforts of the contributors to WordPress and those who use it, I was able to complete the layout changes I wanted in about a day and a half (including testing in IE, Firefox, and Chrome).
For those of you who are new, welcome. Greg and I are just a couple of tech guys who spend probably more than our fair share of time screwing around with this technology. We do it because we love it (although there are times when we curse it). Fortunately, for both of us, we get to take our hobby to work, as we both work in the IT industry (hence the lack of time). If you’re looking for good tech advice based on previous experience, chances are Greg and I could probably help. I’d suggest visiting the forums first, as there is a lot more information there than there is here (for now). If you’re a tech looking to contribute or simply wish to voice an opinion, there’s plenty of opportunites for that too. We’ll figure something out for you, especially if you disagree with something we say.
We hope to be adding more content as time goes on. Greg is working on a redesign of the Mightor Publications ™ site. Right now, my primary focus of my writing is on Mightor Industries. I’d love to add in some of my old content that Ive accumulated over time, mostly tech related things. Also, rather than maintain the commenting style that is currently integrated into WordPress, we’re looking into the possibility of integrating posts with topics in the forum, so that whenever a post is created, all commenting is occurring on the forum.
There’s more to come I’m sure. Or as Greg would say, more info later.