PHP Builder. I’m going to convert tongfamily.com from a FrontPage plus IIS specific site with blogger on top to a pure blog over the next could of months. This is going to be a big project given how many dependencies there are on Microsoft technology right now. Here’s a short list of things to do:
- Remove the current dependencies. Right now I use ASPs for includes on the main page and FrontPage specific navigation. I’m going to start ripping these out so that I will fall back to Server side includes (.shtml) and also simplify the navigation.
- New Content Tool. Right now, I’m thinking that the main publishing tool will be a blogging tool. Either Movable Type or cafelog. This will make it easy to update it regularly.
- New Layout Tool. I’ve been using FrontPage for the layout and right now most people appear to be doing raw HTML level hacking. I need to find a tool that has some WYSIWYG in it, but isn’t as confining as FrontPage. Ironically now that I merged Blogger into the original FrontPage theme, I’m hacking away at HTML anyway. The issues here are doing nice graphics layout and being able to put the blog within it.
- New Photo layout. Right now I’m using ACDSee into a FrontPage thing on the way to just using FrontPage 2002. Now I’ll stop that and look for a nice auto thumbnailer publishing tool. If you know of any email Rich on that.
- Link checking and Navigation Bar building. Probably the best tool in FrontPage. I haven’t found an analog to it yet.
Wish me luck!
