Starting off on the wrong footer

For those who read this and connect my personal and professional life, you may have noticed that one of the sites I maintain, the Adventist News Network has a new look. Possibly wondered why I didn’t make any sort of big announcement here or on Twitter noting the transition or detailing the process.

The reason, reader, is because I don’t like the site. there’s about 10-15% of me that is bitter because I recommended and started development on a different version. The other 85-90% of me is bitter because the new style, which is nice, took over a year to move from concept to deliverable, and the deliverable was so poorly done…

Getting things up to snuff was hard, but I found reward in the way a few teammates went above and beyond the usual workload to see this thing go live (probably because they were as tired of it as I was). It was the first time I felt a sense of team on a web project in the 18 months I’ve been here, and it felt so good..

ANN’s new design still has a ton of issues, enough that I’m fixing and releasing them en masse like a version release. We’re actually calling it “ANN 2.1” and it will largely be an optimization of code and css. We’ll also push the release more appropriate of an Movable Type-powered site—as a template set.

Rather than risking an visible issue as we “upgrade” the design, I thought it’d be nice to stage the entire site on a developmental server and test things first. Problem is, I didn’t have a server environment that matched precisely; ideally it’d be best to mirror the old site, make the changes, and then point the domain to the improved version. So I asked my IT department for a new virtual server.

They kindly obliged earlier this month, and once I got things squared away with the template set, I set out building the server to specifications. One thing I can say about this job: it has broadened my understanding of server administration and Apache configuration. Playing around in a fresh server, googling solutions, and discovering through error is a great way to learn little things you never realized. I’m officially a terminal man now. :)

With nothing really set up as far as web strategy, design process, or even mac hardware tech support for my department, life has been one big problem after another. But now that I’m nearing the end of the worst of it, I’m finding myself more capable and more confident about the methods and systems I came with. Soon, I’ll be able to push forward with a more visible manner—one that I’ll be proud of.