After much research on today's content management system offerings, I finally decided last week to move forward with with Drupal as the background framework for this site. There were many, many options out there, but Drupal seemed to be a powerful and flexible framework for site building, with many flexible options, but without the level of complexity required by the other major offering I was considering (Zope/Plone/CMF, I am much closer to knowing PHP than I am to knowing Python).
I decided to install the CivicSpace distribution combining Drupal with their add-ons and extra modules. Installation was pretty quick, no real surprises from the technology side of things.
Right now I am doing a quick re-skin of the default theme, to make it more "themey" by emulating a few design elements and colors from the SumTotal Systems website. Note that no HTML nor CSS was (permanently) harmed in the production of this website.
Next, I'll start on the site taxonomy and forums as the inital components for the site. I think I can announce then, and work on the email linkage to Yahoo! Groups longer term.
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Joe Kyle
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