Confessions of a cracked-up code monkey

If I've been looking a bit haggard, buggered and harrassed lately, it's probably all down to the hours I've been toiling away at the office, working diligently away to move the entire LINC Online website from its current host and ad hoc WYSIWYG-edited set up into a new Content Management System.

It's hard work, not only because it mostly requires spending around eight hours a day following a constant routine of copying and pasting and occasionally tinkering with some code (a routine I'm sure could drive some men to the brink of insanity), but also because the CMS we're using, Sitekit is, well...It's a pain in the arse, basically.

Don't get me wrong, I mean no disrespect to colleagues who clearly saw it as a valuable investment, and yes, it does have some nifty little features but, on the whole, I find Sitekit to be incredibly cumbersome.

Alas, I must plod onwards.

The LINC Online as it stands at time of writing may be far from perfect, but for all it's flaws and quirks, it still attracts over 1 million page views every year and I'm pretty proud of that achievement, coming as it does on the back of six year's hard graft. Now though, I've been faced with taking that six year's of work and basically starting from scratch inside a month.

Of course, I've been told I don't have to have everything as good as it was on the old site within that month, but I want to, partly because I'm probably something of a masochist when it comes to work, but mostly because I don't want to spend all summer working on it when there's much cooler things to do be doing; like Haigh Fest.

Yep, it's that tiem of year again when our brilliant little music festival starts to occupy my ever Facebook status, tweet and blog post as I set to work cranking up the online publicity for this year's festival.

For all sorts of reasons, this year's event will probably be a lot different from previous festivals, and there'll be a few things going on which haven't before. For my part, that involves going back to interview some of the bands who played last year's festival, making better use of Youtube, getting stuck in with the awesome Storify and (if I can get this approved from the powers that be), announcing this year's line-up live via Twitter.

I'll have a bunch of weeks to do all that (plus more besides) before I fly out to the States for a week, getting home a few days before the festival on the same date that this year's Haigh Hall Live concerts, staring Peter Andre, The Courteeners and The Coral kick off.

Whether or not I'm working those shows yet I'm really not sure as it all depends on the fate the gods, or at the very least, organisers Cuffe & Taylor's awesome PR people, who've been nothing but lovely so far.

When all that's over, I'll probably remember that I haven't updated my blog for a while, and come back with another rambling post such as this one, where I'll probably talk a little bit about my decision to apply for a place in next year's London Marathon and to finally get my backside in gear and study for an English degree.

Until then, I shall leave you with this awesome song which inspired the title of today's post.

Enjoy!