Website Update and Moving Forward

Several years ago, I started Paddlinglight.com as a hobby website and a place to hold my writing. Since then, it’s morphed beyond my original scope now with 12 authors, over 125 articles and pages, and over 27,000 monthly page views. My hobby website has turned into an information source for fellow adventurers, boat builders, and wilderness enthusiasts.

I’ve been excited by the expansion, and for the last year I’ve known that at some point I would have to upgrade the website from basic html to a content management system. For the last three months, I’ve been working to change all the old static html pages to this new version of the website. I’ve done this for several reasons.

The new system makes it easier for me to:

• Update old pages.
• Maintain the entire website.
• Change one items and it will change over the entire site.
• Write new entries.
• Create useful links and organization across the website.
• Add useful extensions as needed.

More importantly, this update allows visitors to:

• Easily search the website.
• Find articles and information quickly.
• Leave feedback on the articles.

This also, sets up the website for the future. If it is ever needed, I can:

• Add Authors.
• Add Editors.
• Create new ways to generate revenue to help pay for web hosting fees.

With any major upgrade, it’s important to watch for broken links, missing pages, etc… I believe that I have a system in place to handle any problems, but more importantly, I hope by taking my time during the upgrade, I’ve managed to find all the problems before they happen, but if not, be sure to let me know about them.

This upgrade is about you, the visitors, and I hope that you find the new website even more useful than before. I appreciate all the support, visits, email, and articles that I’ve received since I started this website, and I look forward to growing and I hope you’ll join me for that ride.

Thank you for all the support!

Bryan