MaineMilitia.com

MaineMilitia.com has existed in one form or another since April 30 of 2000. It was registered by Michael P. Johnson Jr. And was started as a place to post and share his interest in the American Civil War and the reenacting community of Maine.

The website has gone through a series of evolutions since it's inception.

Originally coded in HTML. I added a CGI script for WWWBoard to allow some discussion. In 2001 the static side of the site was built using Greymatter by Noah Grey. Greymetter is one of the earliest pieces web journalling or blogging software. WWWBoard remained for discussion. The message board got regular visitors but few posts.

In 2002 the static side of the website was changed over to Movabletype. WWWBoard remained unaltered.

In the fall of 2003, CuteCast was installed, in place of WWWBoard. This allowed for user authentication and eliminated the spammming on the message board. Usage picked up.

Late in 2003, the entire site was moved from GWI, a local internet service provider in Maine, to Page-Zone, a web hosting service. This allowed me to change the message board to Invision Power Board. Movabletype remained on the static side of the website.

In the summer of 2004, Drupal became the software controlling the static side. Even though Drupal had the capability to function as a forum, I decided not to subject the registered users to the change. The community was growing and many individuals from most of the units in Maine were using the forum so Invision Power Board remained.

On October 28^th, version 4 of the website was revealed. Running on Drupal 4.5.0 with a different theme from before. The aggregated news was adjusted and improved to narrow the results to more specific Civil War in the 1860's. Not Civil War from around the world.

On March 15, 2005, the front side of MaineMilitia.com that was running on Drupal was adjusted to use clean-URLs. Some adjustments to the .htaccess file needs to be completed to handle the rewrite of old search results but otherwise is successful and complete.

Drupal version 4.6 was released on April 15, 2005. The website was updated to this software the following day.

Google AdSense was added to the website on January 24th, 2006. The advertising was added in an effort to help cover the growing cost of providing good hosting and with an idea toward supporting other efforts of the community down the road.

On August 12, 2006, MaineMilitia.com was upgraded to Drupal 4.7.3. With the addition of the Views.module and Panels.module the front page was changed in layout by adding a two colunm center area for the division of news and the elimination of the traditional blog-like appearance.

On January 16, 2007, MaineMilitia.com was upgraded to Drupal 5.0. The theme was altered slightly to the new Garland theme found in Drupal Core.