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Kit Car Birthday Makeover, Part
II By James Martell
The website initially developed out of my love for old cars – particularly the 1965 Shelby Cobra. It probably won’t surprise you to hear that my obsession with cars goes deeper than the website and my 1965 Shelby Cobra replica. A few nights ago, I was watching Chip Foose on the Discovery Channel’s hit show Overhaulin’. As usual, he and host Chris Jacobs were up to no good – if you’ve never seen the show, they ‘steal’ someone’s car every week and give it a complete… you guessed it… overhaul. The car they choose usually belongs to someone who dreams about restoring it. It usually a near-wreck, and the hosts often work with the person’s spouse or best friend to pull off the adventure.
At week’s end, the fully restored car is returned to the surprised owner. I can see why the show is a hit – especially for car enthusiasts like myself. As car lovers, we look forward to looking at (and sharing) photos, seeing befores and afters, and watching videos. This is the direction I’m heading in with my kit car site. I wanted to move away from the Drupal system I had been using previously because surprisingly I just couldn't find a photo or video galleries that I liked. I considered using WordPress, a great content management system (CMS) but it just wasn’t the right fit for this site. I then checked out the BuddyPress plugin. It was free, it offered great social networking features – and yes, it lacked a photo and video gallery. I was having a hard time finding something that fit my needs. I knew what I wanted:
I finally found a CMS that looks very promising. I’ve been trying the demo for a couple of weeks now and I’ve even started moving some of the content from the kit car site to the new platform. So far, so good. The new CMS offers lots of robust features and satisfies every one of my needs. It’s easy to set up and user-friendly – but it’s going to take a while to move the hundreds of pages’ worth of content from my existing site to the new location. To help me out, I asked my son, Justin, and my daughter, Shelby (yes, she was named after the car) to take over the cutting and pasting. If all goes well, I should be ready to unveil the new site by the time I publish my next newsletter. One great thing about this CMS system is that anyone can use it. Even if you’ve never built a site before, you’ll be able to design something that looks great, gives your visitors what they need, and is easy to maintain. Be sure to stay tuned for the big release. In the meantime, it may be time to review a few new options yourself. All the best,
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If
you tuned in to my last
newsletter, you already know
that KitCarConnection.com is
getting a makeover. Even
with 15,000 unique visitors
per month, I decided it was
time to freshen up the site
and bring in even more
traffic.
For
the next week, the owner is
subject to prank calls and
led to believe that their
car has been destroyed.
Sometimes they’re accused of
attempting insurance fraud
or something similar.
