I feel like I just found the button that turns my car into a giant mecha

… though it’s still got some weird bugs, and the same clunky interface.

… though it’s still got some weird bugs, and the same clunky interface.

Okay, so I’ve been plugging away at the teamvancouver.net redesign. The new graphics are sort of coming along—I’ve been redoing them a dozen times, but a few days ago I had a burst of inspiration, so I think I’m finally on the right track. Then again, I’ve said that before.

Anyway. The thing about teamvancouver.net is that it’s built on an actual CMS: WebGUI, to be precise. The learning curve was steep and painful, since it was my first stab at mastering a CMS, the interface is pretty unfriendly, and it turned out I wasn’t even working with the real admin account! The one login I was given had a lot of editing privileges, but not nearly what I needed to do a proper job of redesigning and administering the site. Lots of functions were missing, whole directories were locked, etc…

So I eventually called the hosting provider’s support team to clear this all up, and figure out what I could and could not do. It might be that these restrictions were a matter of policy. But no, it turned out I was just using the wrong account. Finally, I have the godlike powers I’ve been been craving all along!

And now I’ve got a confession to make: part of the reason why I enjoyed working on VGVA.com more than teamvancouver.net was that working with WebGUI this was was like swimming through quicksand, and I wasn’t sure I could deliver on my ideas. vgva.com was under my complete control. Though my little PHP scripts did less, they were all mine and I knew exactly what they could do.

But that’s how it works, and the thing is, I’ve done this before. Long ago I dropped homemade PHP scripts for WordPress (still running on PHP, so not that big a stretch), with my blog. It may be that someday, if I’m still webmaster, I’ll do the same for vgva.com*. No rush, though. In the meantime I get to explore another CMS, with a different code base, it’s true, but no less interesting and powerful. I’m finally seeing it can do all I wish, and more.

(* Well, it probably won’t be WordPress)