I know nobody's listening at this point, but I figured it would be a good idea to get in the habit of posting updates anyway. Besides, this will give me a chance to test out the forums.
Today marks the website's birthday. I registered OrnLARP.com as the domain and established the site using Drupal version 5.12 as the content management system. As it stands, the site is being hosted on my personal hosting account at Bluehost. This may change later when the site comes under ownership of the LLC, but it's a cheap and practical solution for the time being as I set about the task of development.
I didn't waste any time with Drupal's extensible functionality. I installed and configured modules for the forums, picture galleries, group management, events calendar, advanced polling, and chat rooms, among other, more esoteric features like dynamic URL rewriting and custom page titling for SEO purposes.
I also started uploading content from the previous development iteration. This was more to test the functionality of Drupal than to make a dent in the content work that needs to be done. In addition to the Rulebook Outline, I uploaded the rulebook sections on What to Bring and Death and Dying.
Lastly, I established domain-specific email addresses for the site through Google Apps. Right now, the only users with accounts are myself, my brother (and game co-owner) Nick, and my wife Jennifer. This may change in the future as additional administrators want branded email addresses, or may become an added web service if players express enough interest. For future reference, Google Apps allows up to 200 email addresses. So, unless we have grow a very large player base, it's unlikely we'd reach the point where it would start costing the game money.
That's it for now. I doubt I'll get much of a chance to work on the website any more this week, but it's a pretty decent start. Hopefully, my brother will get me some artwork soon so I can start sprucing the place up a bit. ;)