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12 October 2008
Posted in
Site News
Welcome to version 6 of NZMac.com! Despite the obvious new look to the site, this version is more about what's "under the hood" than about the redesign. Those changes though have taken quite some time to prepare, which delayed the redesign until now. NZMac.com now runs on version 1.5 of the Joomla Content Management System and will continue to evolve over the coming months with great new features.
Using a Mac analogy, this change has been a bit like moving to Mac OS X for the first time. And like that transition, the site is now a combination of components running natively and those running under a legacy layer (Joomla's version of "classic" mode). The delay was in deciding when an appropriate time to make that change would be, and developing the NZiPhone.com site using the new version of Joomla provided me with the the insight into what was involved (See?! It's all been one big master plan!)
Some components have been replaced with newer more powerful versions of similar components, whilst some have been updated to those capable of running in "classic" mode or running natively. The most notable of the components running in what Joomla describes as "legacy mode" is the forum section (and probably will for some time). The Quick Tips section is an example of a new component for the new look as the previous component in use hadn't been updated for some time. The new section includes the ability for others to easily place comments into existing quick tips.
The fact that some components were and were not being updated (or had quietly died an open source death) meant it was also an opportune time to further examine which sections of the site were being used. The newsletter system was in heavy use, but the fact was it was simply being used by me on an occasional basis to repeat content that was on the site already. That has now been replaced completely by the News Bulletin system, that does a far better job of automatically sending out new news than I could ever hope for.
There are some big changes planned as more components appear for the Joomla 1.5 CMS and there are some minor tweaks still to be made also. But, as I've always said...I consider NZMac.com to be a work in progress.
Thanks again to everyone for their support, and for the positive feedback from those that I gave a 'sneak peek' to of the site when it was under development.
Welcome to NZMac.com, again.
Regards,
Philip Roy
PS..before anyone rushes to correct me that front page title says "Welcome, again"....I am aware that Apple has used "Hello, again" in the past as opposed to "Welcome, again". Apple's just being very litigious at the moment, so I didn't want the lawyers on to me...ha! ;-)
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