Josh Young

I just wanted to write a quick post today since it’s been about a week since I last posted. I’m tired of posting with Blogger, so I haven’t been very motivated to deal with it lately. :-) I’ll be busting out WordPress soon though, so that will change (I know I’ve been saying that for a while, but other things have taken priority).

One thing I wanted to mention really quick is that I’ve gotten quite a surprise lately over the amount of e-mails that I’ve gotten on our new church website. I’ve been getting e-mails from all over the country asking me questions about our Joomla setup for the church site. It’s been really cool talking to these people, and hopefully I’ve helped them out a little bit. I didn’t realize that the little things I did would get so much notice, but I’m hopeful that God will use the little things I say to help someone else out and get their church site up and running with excellence.

So if you think that something you do is insignificant, just remember that God knows more than we ever will, and he can use everything we do for His glory - even if you’re a geek (especially if you’re a geek).

:-)

I’ve been trying to get some things better organized for the church on the web front, and the master plan I put together was approved, so now I’ve got some work to do. :-)

First, our host has been super horrible with speed and reliability over the past months, so we’re finally making a switch. I signed up with lunarpages.com, and we’ll be moving everything over this week. Everyone should notice a significant boost in performance once that happens. I’ve tried my hardest to make the site optimized as far as speed goes, so the new host should complete the package.

Second, we’ve moved Mike’s blog. He now has his own domain name (www.mikeedmisten.com), and he’s on WordPress instead of Blogger (which was a huge sigh of relief). As soon as I show him the ropes on WordPress, he’ll be back in full force with that. And his blog is on a new server as well. I went with cleverdot.com for his site. I’ve used them on almost all of the sites I’ve been involved in, and they’re great. They’re a smaller operation, but their service and support are some of the best that I’ve dealt with.

Next comes the youth site. I think we’ve just decided on a domain name, so I’ll be getting the ball rolling on that very soon. I’m hoping to finish it over the next few weeks. Look for more news on that soon.

On a non-ACC note, I also set my brother, Joel, up with a WordPress blog. He’s using our old band website, www.joelyoungmusic.com, since it was pretty much in hibernation for a year or so after we all moved and had to quit playing together due to geographical differences.

I think that covers it all. I can’t wait to get all of this finished so that I have 5 minutes to switch my blog over to WordPress from Blogger. I’m getting really frustrated with this setup. Publishing has become a royal nightmare. I initially set it up on Blogger just to see if I would even like blogging (or do it consistently). Now that I’m in the habit, I’m tired of doing this dance just to make a simple post. The switch should happen before too much longer, and I can’t wait.

Late last week, I had my host move me to a new server that supports php5, and I installed activeCollab so that we could start trying it out for some church planning things (namely the website and Apex). Previously, we were using Basecamp for Apex planning, and it worked great, but I wanted to see us using something that we hosted ourself and that was more flexible (and free, of course).

About a month ago, they released a new release candidate for activeCollab, so I installed it once I was switched over, and we’ve been using it for a few days. So far, it’s going swimmingly. Now we can have unlimited users, projects, etc., and we can upload and comment on files (which was missing from the free version of Basecamp).

If you’ve never heard of activeCollab or are just curious to learn more, head on over to www.activecollab.com.