It may have been over two weeks late but www.sm-hog.com was finally launched yesterday morning. It was quite a learning experience for me and everyone else involved.

Its nice to see a project develop into something more than just a bunch of html that nobody will use or appreciate. Hopefully the site will be used by the members.

It actually has quite a few features built in, including the ability for users to register for the site, sign up for rides and events, contact other members directly, get a listing of members, upload images to the gallery, post comments, and more.. All without writing a single line of server side code, besides basic template logic.

Drupal is truly the way to go for these types of websites.

What I learned:
1. As a web developer its important to meet with the client and designer so that design difficulties can be targeted pre development.
2. Meet in person (hopefully more than once), its nice to get to know the people you are working for.
3. Never use a module whose maintainer doesn't even bother to check if the scripts contain syntax errors
4. Design first, program later.
5. Go to bed before 3am, you'll be more productive the next day
6. When having css problems, head to sitepoint.com where Paul O'Brien is likely to offer some very helpful advice to help you fix your layout problems (especially IE bugs). Also, buy his book if you are css challenged like myself.

I'd like to say thank you to Carolyn for the great design work and for putting up with my butchering of her design on several occasions, and to Jennifer for keeping me busy!

2/4/2009 Update
It looks like the members of sm-hog have begun using the website and quite a few photos have been posted to the gallery.