Launched, cleaned

For the past month or two I have been working behind the scenes with Rick from the Bar-barians on redoing their website. The old site was getting stale and had mostly static information in it. I made the suggestion of using WordPress to do the new site since it is flexible, powerful, yet relatively easy to work with.

Rick is a photographer and has background in working with pictures digitally. He worked on a lot of the images/graphics used in the site as well as migrating over information from the old site to the new one.  I worked more on the back end, adding features, a message forum, connections to external content like YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and more.

On Sunday I redirected the domain name to it’s new location, virtually opening the doors of the new site for business.  So far the reaction from everyone has been very positive.  Visually, the site looks 100% better. The functionality, interactivity and information available have all been greatly enhanced as well.

I had a bit of a freak out moment yesterday when Rick told me the site was offline.  I confirmed it indeed was and I contacted my web host.  They told me that it was taken offline because it was spiking traffic.  Evidently so many people were hitting the site that it was using too many of the web server cpu cycles.

I found out a couple plug ins I was running on the site were the primary cause of the overload so I disabled them.  Hopefully the web traffic the new site creates will level out.  Otherwise I would have to look into getting the site out of a shared server environment.

Anyway, it’s exciting to be involved in the site relaunch.  If you want to see the fruits of our labor, go here.

Last night I quickly gave the SSR  a bath for my trip this weekend to the central east coast of Florida for a SSR Fanatics get together.  A bunch of SSR owners are getting together with tool boxes in hand to work on their trucks.

I am planning to install an upgraded radiator support that helps stiffen the front end and LED brake/tail lights.  I also would like to possibly work on fixing the ground on my radio that is causing engine whine noise in the speakers and maybe install an amplified antenna I have had hanging on my workbench for a few months.

I also want to get some opinions on a couple other nagging issues I have had with the truck.  The group has a combined encyclopedic knowledge of the SSR so I can’t imagine a better source of advice.

It’s going to be interesting meeting the group members.  From what I can tell, most of them are at least 20 years older than I am.  I am pretty sure I will be the “kid” of the bunch.