I have been so wrapped up in getting the new website taken care of, as well as medical stuff, moving to a new city, and so many other things, that I didn't notice that the blog posts had disappeared for the last year!!! It was only after Cathy wrote me to ask why I hadn't been writing anymore. (Thanks Cathy!)
Oh well, so much amazing stuff. I will try to reconstruct it someday perhaps.
Let me catch you up.
It is July 25th. 2011.
Ok, you are caught up.
Seriously, we are FINALLY ready top unveil the new website! Yippee! Yahoo! Google! Oh sorry, got carried away.
It should be opened sometime this last week of July, 2011. We are just testing the store program to verify it works correctly. You might wonder why it took so long for this project?
Well, we originally tried to hire someone to do the job of re-writing the website. The site was originally written in MySql, database driven, stack upon stack of information. Basically meaning it was originally never intended to be as large as it turned out to be. We built a one story shack and kept on putting on additions without changing the foundation. Eventually that little shack became a skyscraper and it was leaning badly. It started crashing a lot due to hackers who found a lot of security holes. We knew we had to make some major changes.
The people we talked to looked at the size of the site and said they would not even touch it. Too big a job, too time consuming. We would have to do the majority of the work before they would get near it. I even tried a few colleges to see if they would take it on as a project. No dice.
In the end we had to bite the bullet and do it ourselves. My computer guy built the bones of a new site on weebly, setting up some of the basics for me, and then for the past six or eight months I have been re-writing a section at a time and moving it over there. We also have eliminated quite a few sections as you might have noticed (if you have been there already).
What we have attempted to do is streamline the website, make it solely about CRPS, information, education, and understanding the disease. we eliminated many of the sections that did not directly hit on CRPS itself since now there are hundreds of support websites out there that touch on these areas.
For some people the new website will be a shock, they are so used to the look of the old one. But we think they will get used to it quickly. It is far more easily navigated, information is easier to find, once you get used to the lay-out, and we believe it will be used by more medical professionals as well (especially the ones you send there), and that will help your cause a great deal, because it does look more professional.
So let us know what you think about the new website. Be kind, it took a great deal of work ;-)
It does get difficult to do such things when you are limited to working an hour here and there because of your pain, the amount of time you can sit, how much your eyes hurt that day, what your pain level is, how asleep you are, etc. You guys know what I mean since you also live through this every day.
So, enough on the new site.
What topics do you want to cover over the next couple of months? Send me an email and let's debate some.
Thanks for listening!
Peace, Keith
www.rsdhope.org
