Its been only about four days since I’ve started working on this my latest web project. This is a community site of Jamaican blogs…a one stop repository and top 10 list. Voting will determine who gets the most exposure and will serve as a site for Jamaican bloggers to meet; indeed… a directory for persons wishing to read Jamaican blog content.

The idea is that users may submit links to blogs or start their own blogs here. Users may rate and comment on blogs or blog posts, have their own user pages, and post their own news articles. I also plan to add a module to allow users to communicate with each other without leaving the program.

I planned to log each step of my introduction to Xoops, but learning pains ensured that I had to be totally immersed in understanding this new platform. When I finally got the hang of it, I realized how perfect it was for this project.

Still, I haven’t decided on the name but the problem is that all the good names are taken; mostly by cyber squatters who buy the domain name and inflate the price for resale…not a bad idea, but mi naw pay no more dan $10 fi domain name (I am not paying more than $10 for a domain name).

I had particular difficulties including a blog module so that any registered user can post and have their own blogs hosted. My first choice was Weblog but installation problems meant I finally settled on WordPress Me 0.5.0 which is WordPress integrated in Xoops.

The only thing I don’t like about Xoops is finding a theme to suit my needs. The perfect one would be something in any combination of green, white, yellow, gold or black, or black and gold. The most attractive ones available are in green, but some Jamaicans ironically find green an offensive color even though it is one of the three colors of the national flag. The reason is that it is also the color of one of the 2 major political parties in a country that is highly polarized along political lines. I will keep searching, if not it will have to be green.