I have to admit that my background is much deeper in old-school programming - read, c++, cobol, fortran, etc - than in the newer languages, so I excited to admit that I just launched a new project using the open source content management system Joomla. My goal is to get a site up an running in a month without spending a dime. That's where the open-source comes in!

My experiment is focused on a small town in Mexico called San Miguel de Allende. If you have never visited... you need to! In any case, I grabbed a URL, downloaded Joomla, then started reading everything I could find. Within four hours I had a functioning demo site launched on my URL, and I have to say it really proved to be a "rapid development" platform.

You can check out the work in progress at San Miguel de Allende Mexico and I'll admit that there has been ZERO design put into it so far - so no fair making fun of my 2 cent logo! And, for the record, the town of San Miguel really is amazing. It's worth a visit next time you are in Mexico. It's not on the ocean - s0, don't go looking for waves. But, the food the amazing, the weather is great, and it probably has some of the best art shops in Mexico!