Setting up my new Website with Joomla!

So I decided to build jonny-ash.com as a combination professional/personal resource. For employers, my site needs the following:

• Contact information that is protected from spam-bots
  
• Resume
• Some "about me" information
• References to this blog, which though unprofessional, does demonstrate my dedication to computer science.

For friends and family, I wanted:

• Links to all my identities on different web resources (YouTube, MySpace, Flickr)
• Aggregation (as much as possible) of those identities

This essentially really just boils down to a few use cases. I seriously considered doing it with PHP and calling it a day, but I decided to be adventurous and try getting out of the "coder" mindset and instead using an existing content management system - after all, this "Web 2.0" noise is essentially about using existing software over the web, rather than doing everything yourself. Since Joomla! has a canned installation system on DreamHost (my web host), it seemed like the clear choice.

Now that all is said and done, I'm actually fairly happy with Joomla! as a tool. It's a MySQL-backed system that does a good job of differentiating between style presentation, content, and navigation. You have a user-friendly backend which allows addition of content and drop-in style template changes (totally configurable, if you really care) and all the actual pages are generated with PHP. It's virtually seamless.

Of course, CSS allows us to separate style information from content in HTML, and this is generally good practice that is observed all over. But allowing navigation to remain distinct from content is something really handy, and it's great to be achieve it without using hack solutions (IMHO) like DreamWeaver.

It integrates neatly with Flickr and LiveJournal using Feed Gator as an extension. Blogger actually comes out pretty ugly because there's no "title" heading for Blogger entries, which makes everything pretty unreadable. There are tons of other components and modules that are freely available, as well, and some pretty slick templates.

So though it was overkill, and setup probably took twice what the PHP coding would have taken me, and although Joomla! is occasionally so complex that it gives me headaches, I'm pleased with my decision. Why? Well, mostly because now it takes .5 seconds to install a new theme and completely revamp my website's look. Having spent a summer to accomplish just that much for a college department in the old days, that's pretty danged satisfying.

jonny-ash.com

Introducing jonny-ash.com.

I've finally invested in some real web hosting via DreamHost.

The ugly side of the "Web 2.0" approach

I recently did some work on my Google Summer of Code application. They want to know where my online resume is published. I put one up on Google docs and made it public. Now anyone can spider the Web and read my home address, phone number, and e-mail address. The e-mail addres was intentionally obfuscated from XYZ@gmail.com to "GMail: XYZ" in hopes that I won't be inundated with "VIxAy Gzzzz RA" and "hot nuked grils" in my inbox.

So now I find that I have the following:

• Flickr account


• A Google Docs account featuring my important information for employers


• YouTube account (with new videos, including Aikido)


• Mersenne Twister Party, my Blogger weblog


• A LiveJournal account


• A Facebook entry

So now we have tools like OpenID, but of the above, LiveJournal is the only one that supports it, so that helps, uh, none. Friend-of-a-friend is a machine-friendly method for describing relationships between people (like how we have "friends" on Facebook, and "friends" on LiveJournal, and "friends" flickr.) But again, nobody uses it, so that doesn't help.

So I could list on LJ, Facebook, Blogger, YouTube... etc, every one of this increasingly large list of content hosts. This is annoying, and it also means that a potential employer who reads my blog has to go to my Blogger profile to find my resume, and they'll also find things like my personal music work (which, honestly, isn't something that makes me feel at ease.) And really, I want my friends to know about my YouTube videos and music and such. And I shouldn't have to obfuscate my actual contact information in my resume or expect employers to use Facebook (heh).

So I'm now contemplating going whole-hog before my inbox gets spammed to death and just buying some web space and registering, say, jonny-ash.com. Here's what I want for myself:

Some web service which will keep track of my online identity in all its forms. Something that says "I am X on OpenID, Y on Blogger, Z on Flickr." I also want it to allow me to present myself in a professional way while keeping added goodies for people who want to know about me personally, and if possible, I'd like to restrict access to the personal stuff to friends. And lastly, I'd like it to have actual contact information that is protected from spiders and crawlers that sell my information to spammers.

The thing is, a service which *does* all this is totally possible. Nobody's done it yet.

I could.

Here's how it would work: It should support open standards like OpenID and FOAF. When a user logs in, they can set up an account with links to their various web resources. They should be able to add contact information and make it public or private but hide it behind a "verify that you are human" image so spiders can't read it. They should also be able to hide other information behind FoaF, as in, my "friends" and their "friends" (ideally, whether they are "friends" on Facebook, or LJ, or...) should be able to see my Aikido videos and music recordings. Other people shouldn't.

All of this should be pretty trivial to do, and I think I could get the web hosting for, say, $6 a month. I could sell advertising.

Would anyone be interested? Does anyone care? Should I just set up a personal website for myself and let everyone else do the same...?