What America's Fish is working on to end year

This week between Christmas and New Year's is a new experience here at America's Fish. Last year, this time was spent out of the country trying to keep a digestive system held together, so I didn't quite notice it then that people in the real world take some time to breath at the end of the year. For 12 years before that, all but one holiday season was spent working in newspapers. The only year that wasn't, 2005, came while newly relocated to Chicago and I was taking time between the Rocky and whatever came next (which turned out to be the Chicago Sun-Times) specifically to experience a holiday away from a desk in the newsroom. Journalists generally don't get holidays off. Someone has to fill the pages that hold all those holiday ads in place, although admittedly, there isn't as much to hold in place these days which is why I'm getting to experience a different sort of end to the year. Working in sports, the end of the year was about bowl games and the NFL playoffs, not quiet reflection. Our end of the year came during about a two-week period in the middle of June, after high school seasons were done and before we had to start talking about training camp, when the only thing happening was baseball. Until recently, the Colorado Rockies' season was usually over by then anyway, so that's when the sports desk took a moment for quiet reflection.

Now nearly two years removed from newspapers, I'm working a schedule more like the rest of the world and while there is still plenty to do, it appears that normal people prefer not to think too hard this week. Nothing is quite as urgent here as it was in that other world. So we have a moment to reflect on what we're doing and we will be doing next:

• WyoHistory.org: Putting the final touches on the beta for a site devoted to Wyoming History. The site has come together a bit slowly but surprisingly well using Drupal. While I'm still occasionally frustrated by the amount of work that goes into making the administration of a Drupal site user friendly, a site like this, heavy on content that needs to be sorted and output in many different ways, really shows the strength of Drupal as a CMS. I have wished more than once while working on this site that the Rocky had been using something half as powerful.
• InsideTheRockies.com: We're returning for a third season with the site in 2011 with some new features and a redesign, that will be phased in during the next month leading up to spring training. I considered moving the site to Drupal, but have decided to stick with Wordpress and try to test its limits in the next year. Something about the ease and friendliness of Wordpress seems to fit the overall attitude of the site even if it has its limits as a CMS.
• McNally-Group.com: Closing in on the final stages for a series of websites for the McNally Group, a family of defense and aerospace companies, being produced through the TEN|10 Group. Another test of the power of Drupal, which made one of the challenges of the site — a consistent look for seven sites that also stand alone with their own databases — much simpler than I could have imagined.
• New projects: At least two, and probably three, new website projects are going to kick in after the first of the year.