KAG 2.0--New for 2010

With the New Year, comes the new kingstongeocaching.com version 2.0!

It has been some time in the making, but the new and improved KAG web site is now live.  At first glance, you will notice that it has a whole new look.  But is that all that is new?  If you thought that the content is pretty much the same, you are correct.  But the web site is now driven by a whole new engine; it is my hope that this will allow the web site to move in a whole new direction.

What's new under the hood?

The web site is driven using a content management system called Joomla!  Version 1.0 of the KAG web site used Joomla! 1.0 which is pretty much obsolete, and was replaced by version 1.5 several years ago.  I was resisting the work in migrating from 1.0 to 1.5; anything I read led me to believe it would not be straightforward.  However, as version 1.6 is being developed, I thought I'd better get with the program and make the move.  It really wasn't all the painful.  I am also hoping that adding some "captcha" into the system will cut down on a lot of the spammers that seem to come visiting...

The other big migration involved moving to a new forum system.  The previous forum was very lack-luster in features, and the few features it had didn't work perfectly.  So I wanted to move to another open source forum called phpBB.  This would prove to be a more complicated migration.  I really didn't want to lose the history of the first two years of the forum, so simply starting new (which would be a lot easier) wasn't really an option.  And for the most part, the migration capture most of the history of the post.  There are a lot of new features in this forum, so give me some time to learn them.  Near the top of the list is to implement a 'mobile friendly' version of the forum (to make northernpenguin happy--I want to stay on his good side!)

With any move to a new 'residence' there will be boxes that are forgotten to be unpacked.  You will notice that the photo gallery has not yet been migrated.  I am still researching a better setup for the gallery, but it is in the plans to be implemented as soon as possible.  I am hoping that the new system will make it easier for KAG members to share their caching photos with the rest of the community. So stay tuned. (If you want, you can still access the old gallery for the time being here.  You cannot, however, add new photos to it.)

And with renovations, there is always some dust.  This is likely to manifest as broken links, particularly in the forum posts.  I am planning to mobilize a team of "link busters" to help with stamping out these dead end links to obsolete material.  If you notice dust that doesn't get cleaned up in the near future, do not hesitate to let me know.

Finally, I truly believe this web site belongs to the KAG Community.  With the new system comes an enhanced ability for members of the community to share their views.  I am hoping that this will not only be in the forums (as members have actively done in the past) but also in a series of member blogs on the site.  Blogs will have a 'comments' feature allowing others to respond to the musings of the KAG community.  Give me some time to figure out these new features.  However, if you are interested in being a KAG blogger, don't be shy and let me know.

Once again, welcome to the new (and hopefully improved!) KAG web site.  And a belated Happy New Year--may 2010 be full of smilies for us all.