"timshel is a weird Hebrew word. That's true, but it's also a well known English rock band. timshel have a dedicated fans following them around the pub, club and festival scene for their alternate rock sound which is reminiscent of a mixture of various gods of rock ranging from the Stones to Blind Melon to Nickelback to that fat mad Scottish bird on X Factor (maybe not so much the last one). timshel comprises a bunch of lads that play loud music and they play it very well. Nuff Said" - quote: me, last week.

Based in Southampton, a large seaside town on the southern coast of England, these chaps have been writing and playing their blend of musical rock for years. I have a vague familial connection, my cousin Rob Litten, is the drummer in the aforementioned band. However, putting all family bias aside, timshel rock. Quite literally. That's an empirical fact.

I've been listening to various timshel mp3s in my car for years, so a few weeks ago when Rob called me and asked if I could help them get a website off the ground I was delighted to be involved.

Here's a quick overview of what made up the timshel website http://www.timshel-band.co.uk

The website core is Drupal 6 running a number of modules to tweak its performance and versatility:

• Advanced Forum - an absolute requirement if you are implementing the out-of-box drupal forum
• CCK - of course. Drupal6 without CCK is simply drupal not-quite-working-right
• CCK Embedded Audio and Media - letting us play MP3 and sample videos
• Calendar and Date Modules - we are still fine tuning this, but by the time you read this it's probably being used to broadcast gig dates, festival venues and auspicious lunar cycles
• CKeditor - Simply the best wysiwig editor for Drupal. If you dont think it is... well.. your wrong. so there. This should be in core.
• ActiveTags and Taxonomy Cloud - for those lovely keyword clouds
• dfGallery - first time I have used this Gallery display module. And its really cool.
• XMLSitemap - yet another Drupal module that should be in core.
• and loads more...

The basic premise of the website was to give it a dark style with simple layout for band members to add new articles, blogs and tour information. A Forum was needed for fans to ask questions, chat or simply to waffle. Integration with Amazon for buying music and MP3's. A smart gallery with a few photos and a simple means of playing some timshel tracks online. Fans will be able to upload pictures from gigs, vote in polls and buy music, Cd's and merchandise. Finally, I added Twitter and Facebook hooks for a simple to use social interface.

It's out there on the world wide super web highway.

Surf off to timshel, click PLAY and turn your volume nob to 11!!!!!