Welcome to version 7
Monday, June 26th, 2006
It’s taken a while for me to finally decide to go with WordPress as the backbone of my blog. In the past, I was always a little worried about depending on a database to display the contents of my site, because I’d seen many sites crumble due to PHP errors. I realized that it was mostly due to the webmasters not knowing much about PHP, but I knew that I didn’t know much about PHP, and definitely less than the aforementioned webmasters. Because maintaining a site running on a database seemed like an arduous task, I figured it was only for the technologically elite, which definitely wasn’t – and isn’t, truth be told – me.
Because of my growth in web design, I’ve been able to better understand databases and how they run, and it’s helped take the fear out of it. I’ve learned that there are definite benefits to using a blog system like WordPress over hand-coding XHTML (but I’ll never stop that). Because of my years spent typing everything out by hand, I’ve come to understand the code more than if I had kept with website design programs like Dreamweaver. It is because of this knowledge of the code that I feel comfortable using a blog system like WordPress, rather than a lack of knowledge.
Basically, the switch is all about convenience. However, because of that convenience, I’ll be able to present a better website to the readers. Despite my aforementioned knowledge about XHTML, I admit I know very little about PHP. I couldn’t design a blogging system like WordPress if my life depended on it: well maybe if it did, but it would be very, very hard, and would likely be terribly ugly. I wasn’t ever able to implement a search system, and I realized that navigating my archives was a bit of a chore because of it (like anyone actually reads those, though). Being able to make a post without having to update a Sitemap, index page, and archive page would mean that I’d be able to post more, and more often. Posting on version six was fun, but it became a chore at times, especially if I forgot to update one of the required pages. Ironically, I switched to version six because version five required too many pages to update!
Anyway, for those of you who were wondering, this update was the biggest reason why I hadn’t updated the site in some time, especially in the area of Canon EOS 30D pictures. I’ve been taking a lot of them (a lot less than I’d like), and have been itching to post them in a way I would find presentable. This site helps fill that need.
I hope you enjoy the new version. For those who weren’t familiar with my last upgrade, I had a period of a few weeks where I tweaked any bugs I may have found. For all my complaints about companies putting out junky products and slapping a BETA sign on it, I find myself hypocritically doing the same thing out of excitement. Granted, I’m not a company – and if I was, I wouldn’t do this – but I do feel a little twinge of guilt putting this up when it may have parts that I eventually feel need to be changed.
Then again, if you knew how long it took me to finally come up with the previous designs for this site and others, you’d realize why I would want to quickly post something to stop my perfectionism from preventing any progress.
For those who would like a bit of nostalgia (or horror, I suppose), I’ve left my older versions of the site up in the Archives. Of course, like in previous versions, it’s still a work in progress, and I haven’t been able to put everything up yet at the time of this writing (I’ve got to hunt on some CDs for the older stuff). I’ll get all the files up on the site eventually: for now, the links are there for the older versions, but aside from the most recent previous version, nothing is in the folders.
In closing, I’d like to remind everyone that this site continues, in part, to be licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
. There are going to be some works that aren’t listed under the license, so please respect the copyright of such works. It’s an honor system in the end, but I do hope you will show integrity and respect my wishes. It’s a small thing to ask, isn’t it?
Thanks for visiting. Get ready. I’m excited!