GeologyRocks

So, the first blog entry...hmm...what to write about?

I suppose the first entry should be about how GeologyRocks was converted to the Drupal, a CMS. With "some difficulty" is the answer! There were hundreds of items of content that need to be transfered over (424, plus all the forum stuff). The forum posts are easy as someone kind soul has written a wee script to do this *phew* The other content, however, was not so straight forward. I could have written a similar script to the forum one to convert the material over. But, as was the case a year ago when we made he move to GR2, I thought this would be a good opportunity to edit the material as I went...making minor spelling, grammar and stylistic chnages as I went. This is why it's taking so long! I worked out the other day (I wasn't bored, honest!) that it's going to take around 56 hours to convert the material across. 2 working weeks, essentially. Unfortunately this is a busy time for me as I have my PhD viva in 3 days. Hey ho, it will happen though.

 Another reason for problems is my insistance on using Drupal 5. Half the modules I had originall planned to use aren't converted yet. However, given the time it's going to take to transfer content, this might resolve itself.

The final reason the length of time is all the little niggles I keep coming across that I didn't anticipate. For example, the taxonomy output of drupal resolutely sticking to date-sorted output, not alphabetical for the glossary. Again, modules do exist to fix this, but they aren't ready for version 5 as yet. I also have a few page issues, such as the image pages not displaying correctly. On top of this, I keep forgetting stuff. I hoping this blog will fix that as I plan to keep notes in it (might make for some boring reading though )

So, GR 3 is coming, I promise. It is getting there. We will make this the best geology site on the web. I just might be a nervous wreck by the time we get there