the KlezmerShack

Ya'll know how, for years, I've been talking about how the KlezmerShack is going to get new code, get some new features, and move into the 21st century? I've been intending to move this site into an open source content management system called Drupal, which is the same tool that I recommended to the Jewish Women's Archive (disclaimer: I am JWA's chief techie. But at the day job, I can hire competent people to make this work. For the KlezmerShack, I gotta figure it out myself). Drupal comes with lots of smarts built in, and a very good community of smart people.

Along the way I have bought several books on making drupal do what I want (and read zillions of rather excellent articles). The books, so far, have sucked. They make me want to find time to learn this all so that I'll write the better book, except that now I don't have to. O'Reilly Publishers have released "Using Drupal," which sounds exactly like the book I want to read. Better, one of the authors held a contest in which he offered to send a free copy of the book to the person posting the best comment about the site they'd build with it. The KlezmerShack won!.

One way or the other, this website is moving into the current century this year. When we're done, people will be maintaining their own information; calendar entries will no longer require me to mediate getting the damn information to KlezmerShack readers, and this will all work and be accessible from those new-fangled mobile devices. And now, for better or worse, that boast has been exposed to people on this other blog, so I guess I had better make it happen. At least I'll have a nice example of that old-fashioned print stuff to help me get there.