I was due for a site software update, so I decided to modify the site as a whole. My main goal was simplification and to improve on usability.  As I went through the visual-template code, I also attempted to improve execution speed by minimizing include files and removing unnecessary features.

1. Minimize the website banner to remove wasted space (logo redesign as well).
2. Remove unpopular items from the site such as the forums.
3. Reorder the site tags, recent postings, and other navigation links to improve on ease of use.
4. Lessen the use of colors on the site.
5. Clean up the footer area.

I’ve noticed that the site seems to load faster in general. I suspect something like that XML parser for the forum was decreasing overall speed quite a bit.

1149 lines of code so far. That’s not including and database file initialization code or other things such as the css for the public site.

Completed (“somewhat tested”):
- Add/edit main page links
- Add/edit/delete main page basic html content blocks
- Visual template system and the final visual look of the site.
- Public index.php looks “done” visually. The main links work and display all basic – content blocks when clicked (ordered by ‘zorder’). It’s just lacking sub links (articles and galleries).

To Be Completed:
- Delete main page links (I haven’t decided if I want it to do a recursive deletion of all content associated with it or not).
- Add/edit/delete articles (aka. multipage basic html content blocks).
- Add/edit/delete image galleries.
- Make the admin pages secure.
- Testing, testing, and more testing!

I’ve been thinking of not bothering with an image gallery aspect. The multi page articles would have similar abilities to a photo gallery. The only difference is that it could not support the thumbnail->large image functionality.

Edit: I was thinking of adding a global error handler that pipes all errors into a 50 – 100 item large database table. This table would be viewable from one of the admin pages. It would save a lot of effort debugging second-hand problem information.

Here is a sample of the site: