So now that we have the plan and products in mind, it's time to rebuild the website. In the long run, we would like to host on-site and have a fully interactive web presence with all kinds of bells and whistles, but with the mindset of 'Getting Things Done', that just is not a good idea at this point. As an aside, accepting that is one of the hardest things to overcome in the 'what I want' category. Taking a longer view of where we want to take Druware, we have started with a very basic, largely static website.
So what are we using to build the site? Well, the server is a shared hosting plan, running a version of Linux. We are using HTML and PHP on the server, and using a mixture of Coda, CSSEdit and Adobe's CS3 Web for all of our development processes. We'll be reviewing each of these in the not too distant future. Then for this blog, I have elected to use SandVox rather than one of the server side engines. Primarily, because I prefer client side editing. If you've read some of my stuff prior to moving here, you'll notice that I have a strong bias towards client side applications over 'Web' applications.
Building a website is, at best, an iterative process. This first pass at restructuring is just that a first pass. We've taken what we learned didn't work in the past and started fresh applying things we've learned along the way, and working a little bit at a time, we are building what we want.
The term I find most descriptive actually comes from a former coworker of mine, Emma, who described the process as 'Baby Steps'. The process boils down to applying the same steps I've used in coding to building a business. Make a small effort, test it, deploy it, build on it. In code, that is build a unit, test it, deploy it into the project and move on to the next part that builds up from it. In business, it means building an aspect of the business, and then build on it from there. In this instance, it's the website, which is, for all intents and purposes, the modern equivalent of hanging a sign on the door that says, open for business.