After a little bit of time horsing around with that San Juan Islands news and headlines forum I discovered the forum software I had chosen ( phpBB ) was difficult to customize and suffered from a dwindling developer base. That means not much innovation happening with the add-in’s and new features. So after some research ( a couple hours ) I found the simple machines forum. It had all of the extras that I wanted such as RSS feeds for each board and topic plus numerous cool add-ins that allow you to insert Google advertising, and even revenue share amongst people who are posting to your newsgroup. The kind of stuff that Web developers have wet dreams about.

rundown of the simple machines forum on my Dreamhost account

I tried to do the web install of simple machines forum on my Dreamhost account without any luck. So don’t try that. I ended up just doing the manual installation which was very easy anyway. I just created the database within the control panel, uploaded the files to my account, visited the install page and followed through the installation wizard. Everything went well and then I proceeded to customize the gallery by changing the theme and downloading and installing a couple plug-ins. Installing the plug-ins was quite easy as well; just downloaded the zip files from the mod website and then uploaded them through the forum’s control panel. Once they are uploaded to you have the option to activate or deactivate them. You are supposed to back up everything before you do this but I did not because I am a web developer Maverick. A top gun web developer not a Naval aviator that will take your breath away. The theme/template that I downloaded is nice on the eyes and visually stimulating. Hopefully it will excite people enough to get involved in the discussion. The template came from this website http://www.dzinerstudio.com/. The new template/theme even provided a Photoshop file with the layers preserved so you could easily customize the theme to your liking. If I told you any more I would have to kill you.

Here is another project I have under development; I don’t know why I didn’t set up this site earlier because I have thought about it several hundred times.  All of the newspapers in the San Juan Islands have failed to innovate with regards to allowing their visitors to communicate with each other.  So I have set up a discussion forum for locals to discuss local news headlines.  I have been loading it up with the headlines every day and just started to promote it on some of my other websites in the islands but I need help getting people talking.  If you find any of the subjects interesting please don’t be shy to start posting replies.  Just click on the link below to visit the site.  You can also get there by visiting www.Desticam.com and clicking on the “discussion forum” link near the top.  Here’s the direct link to the form: http://www.desticam.com/_forums/index.php?board=1.0

We are back in the San Juan Islands; check out the photos here:
http://www.wesedholm.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=1276

Want to see an image of Friday harbor at sunrise yesterday?  Want to see a picture of snug Harbor during the snowstorm last winter? How about last Fridays sunset? Well now you can using DestiCam.com!  Just select a location, time and date and there you have it!  All of our live web cams from around the San Juan islands are archiving every single high quality image ever taken from every minute from every day from every location where we have a camera! Remember that this is still in beta; we should have everything working right and looking pretty within a month. For now you can play with the beta version here: Time travel the San Juan islands

Or you an visit the home page by clicking here: www.DestiCam.com