Web Site

The web site is built with PHP, MySQL, and Apache all running on OpenBSD. I wanted the design tools to be cross platform, PHP, Apache, and MySQL all fit the need. I developed the site on my laptop running various builds of Windows NT, 2000 and XP, IIS and Apache. I can take those files move them to the web server and I'm done. I'm a good systems administrator but also a lazy one. If there is a way for me to save time and effort I'm going to attempt to implement it. Using cross-platform tools is one way some of the design ideas outlined below are others.

While I'm not a programmer and struggle with some of the most basic programming concepts I like the idea of a flexible framework and modular design. The menu, header and footer designs are all maintained in separate files and added to the pages with the PHP include() function. This way I can make the change one place and all the pages are instantly updated. Nothing major but a huge time saver as the site grows. I use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) for the same reason. I can change the look of my entire site by changing the CSS definition.

The Pics pages are another example. The code is written so that to add another group of pictures all you need to do is create two subdirectories with the EXACT name you want to appear in the list. One in "pictures" and one in "thumbs. Drop the pictures and thumbnails into the directories and you're done. Later I want to add the ability to resize the pictures on the fly. Then all you'll need to do is drop the pictures into the new directory, the system will take care of everything else.

The iNetLabs image at the top of each page was created by Cooltext.com. This is a unique site that uses the Gimp program and some scripts to create custom images on the fly.

All the pages on my site have been validated to be using correct HTML 4.01 syntax. Assuming that all browsers correctly adhere to the HTML 4.01 spec this site should look the same in each and not have any errors. I've learned quite a bit in about HTML in getting my pages to validate and it was surprisingly difficult. I went to several major web sites and tried to validate them with less than impressive results. Give it a try, go to the W3C Validator and type in the url of the site you want to check.