2007

A new Shaolin site. Born September 11, 2007

It was becoming obvious that HTML web sites were becoming archaic and, in cases of large websites, unmanageable. With well over three hundred HTML pages, and other affiliated software programs that interacted with those pages, the Shaolin based russbo.com just became far to big. And working with it in Microsoft's Frontpage, which I've used since the site's inception, was just becoming difficult. Microsoft Frontpage was ok for small sites, but as you got bigger and more complex, it just didn't work.

I was going to convert everything from Frontpage HTML code to a more commonly acceptable HTML code found in Dreamweaver, with a more manageable navigation structure, but I soon found out that converting a these few hundred pages was going to be a veritable nightmare. As I had become comfortable with PHP and MYSQL database management, which the forums use, I started to investigate a new way of presenting information. Having your information in databases made securing and backing up information much easier; changing the presentation of the data was also easier to do. The site could be altered at will, and the information presented in a much clearer, more professional fashion. Thus, the move to the Content Management System.

It took over three months to convert the few hundred HTML pages into database form. This included reorganizing the site, rewriting articles, adding articles, and adding other software programs into the site to make the presentation of the information more palatable.

The site became one of the largest Shaolin based web sites in the world, with almost five hundred articles, and close to 3500 navigable pages.

The new CMS database driven russbo.com was launched on September 11, 2007. It was on this date that all the page visitation counters started at zero.

Shaolin Temple Perspective russbo.com 2007

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