I figured I should explain the purpose behind this website as well as its workings a little more in detail, so here it is.

So when I first set out to design this website, I wanted it to encompass all of my work, hobbies, and personality. What came out as a result was something quite classy, but a little bit too dark in color for my taste. To manage the blogs, I virtually designed a custom content management system with PHP and MySQL, which I had not worked with since the (unfortunately offline) SCARAB website, a textbook-exchanged forum I developed with a friend who attended Wesleyan University. The CMS allowed me to update content remotely and dynamically, while the layout was in simple, clean XHTML/CSS.

The custom CMS was quite straightforward and did its job, but it also had its shortcomings. I had not figured out how to upload pictures through GUI, so I had to manually type sources and float tags. So when I decided the website needed to be re-designed and brighter, I looked into other CMS’s out there, and eventually turned to WordPress. Having checked out a couple others like Drupal and Joomla, I was very skeptical of CMS’s and their flexibility. The mentioned two have a very steep learning curve, and I am still not sure whether Joomla can be 100% customized. WordPress was actually too easy to mold into shape, and you bet I’ll be using it again. One tutorial I found online brought me up to speed with pretty much everything WordPress does that is worth mentioning: Go here for the best WordPress tutorial ever. I’ve gone through a lot of tutorials in my time, and this is one of the most intuitive.

So WordPress makes a lot of things easier, most importantly insertion of images, videos and other media. With my CMS, I didn’t bother with built-in styles because well, I know HTML. But I’m quite happy I made the switch.

This website was W3C Validated XHTML 1.0 Transitional on September 29, 2009.