Hide your coffee, I'm back for good!

It's been a long time my friends. It's been far too long. I'm posting here to officially announce my return as a contributor to the ImpressCMS project as well as answer a few questions that may, or may not be arising.

What happened?

Most of the people who got this project started already know the answer to this question, but for the benefit of those who remember me from XOOPS, but don't quite know what happened to me, I'll explain.

When the whole debacle with XOOPS happened last year, I had some involvement in getting this project started, but my involvement was short lived. Life issues and being completely burnt out on being "officially" involved in an open source project are the primary reasons I didn't stick around. 

During the time I was "away", I watched from the shadows regularly. Of course, having contacts who are regularly involved in the project also helped keep me somewhat up to date on the goings on around this project. I'm thankful that they didn't let me run too far. ;-)

For whatever reason, my name remained on SF.net as a developer, even though I've yet to contribute a single line of code. I'm grateful for this as well, though for a while it puzzled me. Thanks guys for not listening to me!

What have I been up to?

In the time I've been away, I've mainly been working in web development, blogging, and in the Social Media realms. I've been extensively researching Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking, Blogging, as well as a very nice blogging platform, Wordpress. 

For several months, I actually subscribed to the Wordpress dev mailing list and even made a couple suggestions, but that's as far as my involvement in that project went. I did develop numerous websites with Wordpress and I found it to be a very powerful system, though still not a perfect replacement for a true Content Management System. It can be used as a CMS, but you need to know how to develop with it to get it there. Where Wordpress shines is as a blog and I still recommend it to anyone who wants just a blog.

All the while I was working with Wordpress to develop sites, I kept longing for my ol' standby CMS, XOOPS, which was now taking new life and direction as ImpressCMS. I downloaded iCMS a few times during the early days of its development and I was impressed, but there was a certain pain I felt then that made it to hard to move on at that time. To be honest, I still feel some of that pain, but fortunately, circumstances require that I suck it up and get over it. That's a good thing. I'm finding that I've missed a lot of good things and good times around here, but as they say, "abstinence makes the heart grow fonder."

Why did I come back?

You can thank a few people for that, and so will I. In a nutshell, I got a new job. A job working with INBOX International. Of course, INBOX being a major supporter and user of ImpressCMS, you can guess what I started working with from day one. That's right, ImpressCMS powered sites. So, my "day job" requires my involvement in this project in one way or another. But that's not the only reason I came back, far from it! I've been wanting to come back and contribute for quite some time, but as I mentioned earlier, I had a certain amount of pain I was feeling that I had trouble getting over. Going to work for INBOX was just the push over the edge that I needed to come back.

My goals in returning to contributing to ImpressCMS are simply to share what I've learned in my travels and to try to help others. Of course, as a byproduct of a "day job" that uses this application for commercial development, I also have a vested interest in ensuring that this application grows in a positive direction. Again, that's not the main reason, but it is a contributing factor.

The main reason for my return is that I need a good CMS, a real CMS to build sites with. One that harnesses the power of a full-blown CMS, but is still simple enough for my friends, family and clients to use. XOOPS always gave me that and ImpressCMS is taking that leaps and bounds further in the right direction. By returning, I hope to share what I've learned about Standards, SEO, SMM, Social Networking, Design and Accessibility in the hopes of helping this project move forward.

What will this mean for ImpressCMS?

You have another developer with a wide range of experiences that go back further than XOOPS does (back to PHP-Nuke before the fork). That's it. The days of the old ways XOOPS was ran and of my being a Chief Moderator/Server Manager/Blah/Blah/Blah are over! This is a new project with a new model and I like this model a whole lot better!!! My hands and experience are here to help, just like everyone else who contributes to this project. So, no worries. ;-)

Why did I write this?

I wrote this blog post for a few reasons.

• I'm a blogger. It's what I do. ;-)
• It's better to hear it from the horse's <cough>a$$</cough> erm... I mean horse's mouth. Yeah, um.. that one.
• I'm p@r@n0!d.
• I was bored.
• I wanted to clear the air here and now so that we can move on without these questions needing to be hashed through later. Then again, nobody has asked, so I'm probably just being p@r@n0!d. ;-)
• Take your pick.

I hope this [not so little] post clears the air and I look forward to seeing you all more and contributing what code I can. This time, I actually have SVN setup and will be commiting. Imagine that!

See you in the threads.