Finally this site is beginning to be operational. Some details on how this works at the moment:
The web hosting (e.g. the server that hosts and sends you the data when you type in schulzi.com.au) is done by an old PC in Bondi. It has a web server software (Apache) and a database (MySQL) installed and is on an ADSL connection.
The domain name is delegated by Telstra, i.e. they are making sure that when you type schulzi.com.au you get to this site.
The CMS (content management system) used is called joomla. Joomla is open source software, which means that it is created and maintained by a group of people who do not charge you if you use it and who welcome you to contribute to its development. Joomla is one of the most popular CMS, it is used by not for profit organisations just as much as by commercial entities and drives some very big websites.
The version of Joomla we are using is 1.5.10 which is the most recent one. It is not very difficult to install, and if you follow the instructions and have your web hosting worked out, it will take you a couple of hours and you have a properly working website similar to this one.
Joomla's capabilities can be extended using extensions or modules, little or not so little bits of software that can be installed as add ons and enhance the website. We use some extensions for user management, newsletter generation, image galleries etc., namely:
- Community Builder for user and list management
- Morfeo show for image galleries
- sh404 for URL optimistaion
- JoomSEO for search engine optimisation
- xmap for the site map
- Communicator for newsletters
- Google Analytics tracking
Google analytics shows you how many people are coming to the site, which pages they are going to and how long they are staying. This of course is the big advantage of online publishing over print: you can measure what is happening with your investment, and a dashboard of a busy site is an amazing view.
Then there are applications like Instamapper, which display your IPhone location on a google map. To be added are better News feeds and a twitter feed.
Addendum:
I have added a few things: there is a joomla based document management system (Docman), many other extensions, a twitter feed, the news feed does tech crunch, there is a mail server (mail enable) which works really well (once you made sure, it is secure). Filezilla is the ftp server.
