For the second time in its history, this site has undergone a major upgrade.
Following more than 5 months of extensive and intensive development and testing, the site was officially “reloaded” on October 4th 2009, at 2:00am, South Africa time.
Starting off in 2007, VE.com was a static, HTML based site, with a phpBB based forum. Very soon into the game, our scope widened, and it became apparent that we really needed a dynamic, flexible management platform that could handle an ever-growing collection of articles and pictures, and at the same time host a forum and whatever other features we might want to add to it. Enter “VE.com version 2”, a Joomla based site, which since its official launch on October 10th, 2007, served its purpose well, and firmly established VE.com on the web. This is the version that everyone is currently familiar with.
But again, true to the ever-changing nature of the web, an upgrade was needed. Not only was there a major architectural update which we needed to implement (one which literally required a complete rebuild), but again our scope had changed somewhat. VE.com is now much more of a community driven site, with user access not just to the forums, but also to blogs and galleries. Members can now also write articles for the site, something we will expand on in time.
Furthermore, our focus has expanded to include the entire Maloti-Drakensberg region. We have a fully fledged Lesotho section. From 03 April to 12 August 2009, we ran a poll entitled “Should this site also focus on Lesotho?” Though the number of votes cast was pretty small (35), the results were clear: 90% voted Yes, with only 5% voting No, and the remaining 5% indicating that it would not make a difference to them.
Our focus is thus on the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains of South Africa and Lesotho, and on the Himalayas of Nepal and Tibet. Content on the Himalayas has lagged behind somewhat, but we have some ideas to getting this ticking. And, it should be noted, that this site can cater for any mountain range or region. You will notice that some allowance has been made to cater for material featuring other mountains.
There is a lot more in store and plans for the future are already buzzing! But for now, we’re just looking forward to having some sort of normality return to our lives, and simply enjoying the site as we hope all of you will. From myself (intrepid) and domsmooth, we’d like to extend thanks to ClimbyKel (who is now also a forum moderator), fatshark, black 90, thomasabbott, Magan, gollum and HolymanSA, for moral support and for help in testing the new site. Thanks also go to our faithful coffee mugs that supplied us with the countless cups of coffee that are needed for a project like this!
