All new? Tell me something useful!
OK, so right now it's not THAT new - or is it? Visually we've changed the front page and we've begun the process of converting PROnetworks to a content management system (hereafter CMS). This process is likely going to be a long one, in the ballpark of months most likely - so patience will be of essence as we move forward. So why are we doing all this?

Since 2001 PROnetworks has run on a open-source forum platform known as phpbb. Great software and their latest forum version (phpbb3) is really amazing considering the price tag: $0. However, PROnetworks is (and has been for some time) a lot more than a forum. PROnetworks offers news, guides, blogs, a media center, and much more content. Thus, a CMS has been needed to handle our content. For the last 7 years we've made do with phpbb and blogs like Wordpress and Moveable Type; the later handled our news. When phpbb3 came out however, we learned that HTML would not be supported - and that was bad news for a lot of webmasters using phpbb as a make-shift CMS.

So the search began...

What we found...
After months of searching we discovered a system that most of you have probably never heard of. Most of us hadn't either. We experimented with Drupal, Joomla, Mambo, and close to 20 other powerful CMS's. Eventually we found a CMS called Expression Engine (EE for short). At first our webmaster was extremely cautious about the application - having never heard of it himself. But after experimenting with it for a few days and getting the basics of it under our belts, we were blown away at the flexibility of it. Expression Engine is a creation of Ellis Labs. They describe it as, "a flexible, feature-rich content management system that empowers thousands of individuals, organizations, and companies around the world to easily manage their website."

Honestly, we couldn't agree more. Whether you've heard of it yet or not... well, now you have and I assure you that you won't be disappointed.

EE apparently used to be primarily for bloggers, but has since developed into a significantly more powerful application - a full blown CMS that offers a large variety of modules, plugins, and extensions. The modules are the most important thing to note there, as they are what really got our attention. EE was nice for content like news, the blog, our guides, etc - but what about our forum, gallery, etc. EE has them all and then some. It even has a Wiki, Mailing List, Commerce, and RSS module - plus several others. Now we can have all our content, including the forum, under one roof as it were. One userbase and one big happy database that houses the whole package.

What's next...
Right now we're about about 20% of the conversion process. We've got our news switched over from Wordpress (which we started using after learning about phpbb3's lack of HTML support) and we've also switched over the blog (also out of Wordpress). We're in the process of converting the WP news into an EE format, so we'll add the archived news in later. We're also converting our media center from Moveable Type. We've begun to convert the forum, but this will take much longer to ensure maximum efficiency. Our initial conversion went well though. We're also in the process of moving our guides out of our forum and into EE.

The power and all inclusiveness of EE likely won't be noticed until we're about done with the conversion - the "Great Switch" if you will. So we ask for your patience and support as we move through this long process and we assure you that it'll be worth the wait.

Last thoughts...
We may hold off on our forum conversion until EE version 2.0 (and its respective forum) are launched. EE's existing forum (build 2.0 in the forum numbers) is about the same as our phpbb 2.0.xx forum features wise. But we may be better waiting for the next version. This will be decided by our management over the coming months. In the meantime we hope you enjoy the power of our new EE based system and we look forward to seeing you on the boards.

If you're interested in seeing a fully EE based site then take a look at our webmaster's other fully converted EE website: www.Hawaii-Guide.com