I’m happy to announce that the other site that I mentioned is pretty much ready to go live sometime today if the fates are with me. This site will hopefully will be used by my World of Warcraft guild which is called Shadow of the Black Dawn. We had a forum at one point but it was hacked and the Guildmaster got fend up with it and deleted everything and would not let me try and fix it for him. So I said I would create a better and more secure site for him and he said fine and pretty much forgot about everything. I don’t honestly think he actually expected that I would actually do anything. I think I surprised him when I messaged him in the game with the URL though. 
The hardest aspect of this entire project was to get an online photo gallery to share the same user login information with a forum and have them both integrate seamlessly and transparently for the user with a content management system (CMS).
What this basically entails is that 3 separate systems all of when are supposed to run 3 separate databases all had to be combined to use only 1 so that when someone logs in on the main page they get logged into everything else. Needless to say this was a real bitch to get working and Rob and I have had some sleepless nights squashing all of the bugs that came up. I have enjoyed it and to be honest about the only aspect of web design and creation that I have a real talent for is organizing and getting everything that works behind the scenes to function, or as they call it in “the industry”, the backend. If you want graphics made or need help designing an interface for visitors to your site to view I am not your man, though if you need help figuring out how to setup a website, keep it running, and keep it secure then I am your man.
I’m a very patient and meticulous person when I need to be and I like challenges such as this so its been interesting and pretty fulfilling over the last week or so. Also, I did this with entirely open source software! Yes, I know that there are several commercial software packages that I could have installed and they would have just worked but that is not what I like using. 
When you use open source software you get the security that comes with thousands, if not millions of different eyes all looking through the code to fine code that can be exploited or that is inefficient, also if any security holes happen to come out for the software that I used I have the comfort of kn owning that I have entire communities to draw support from until the developers release patches (usually the same day). So hopefully we will have better luck now with resisting hackers. 
All that I have left is to let the Guildmaster and officers (I was just made a guild officer for making all of this happen and for some of my organizational talents that I have shown from time to time) play around with it and then open it up to the existing members and the public. After that I need to find a way to make it look more like a WoW site. This is the hardest part for me because somehow completely original graphics and theme(s) will need to be created and I am completely clueless with things like this other than some frilly basic knowledge of CSS that I picked up in the last year that I dated my ex and the worthless ramblings of my web design instructor, Dr. Johnson (note the complete use of Frontpage for creating that site). So now I am going through all of the people that I know and feel like conversing with that have any experience with things like this and I am starting to call in favors to try and get some of these things created.
If anyone out their who reads this would like to give me a hand or has any comments or suggestions please drop me a line (don’t forget to edit that address ;)) I would be in your debt. Till next time, I’m out!
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