Oddball Update

I’ve stepped up my efforts to acquire the ExpressionEngine weblog system. Originally I thought I’d wait until I finished whatever work assignment the Bikini Dude has for me, but last night I realized that I might be able to qualify for EE’s $99 competitive upgrade deal. I’ve been running Movable Type on another site for quite a long time, and I think that will qualify me. So I sent an email in to the upgrade team to see if I can get the deal. If so, I’m dropping the money on the system immediately. I’ve got $100 cash saved up that’ll be just perfect for the cause.

In the meantime, I have 13 days left on my EE trial license, and the nice thing is that I can begin to set up OU³A right away, then simply enter a license key later to activate all of the remaining features. The coolest feature of all, the ability to parse PHP in templates, is disabled in the trial version, but just about everything else works.

I’m considering adding a few features to the site and deleting others. For instance, I’m thinking of putting up my own shoutbox, after seeing how popular Sparse’s has become. I’m also adding special articles available only to registered members, and closed posts where I can discuss topics only of interest to certain individuals (who will also have exclusive access). Commenting will automatically close for entries older than 30 days, so I don’t have people dredging up irrelevant crap from years past and commenting on it out of nowhere. And, much to my relief, EE comes built in with the exact sort of “who’s online” system that I have been trying to bugfix into submission right now. There will be myriad other improvements, too—most notable of which is the fact that the site isn’t likely to break when you look at it, much less attempt to post something. I have a feeling WordPress has scared away my other post authors, so hopefully the new system will win them back.

As previously mentioned, I plan to retain the new design you see here, except I’d like to add a couple different color variations on it (like I had before), complete with a switcher where you can choose what skin you want. There will be lots more stuff too, as I think of it. Maybe even some utterly pointless and irrelevant eye-candy stuff. And if I’m lucky enough to snag a beta of EE 1.2, I can even replace the entire Oddball Photo Gallery with EE’s own integrated unit, whereupon I can even seamlessly display items from the gallery on the weblog here. Pretty sweet.

Okay, that’s all for now. I’m just creating more work for myself by posting all this additional stuff, but I can’t help it.

Categorized as Site