I needed a new site and I wanted to break away from the design I had been using pretty much for the last 6-7 years. The one with the thumbnails to one side and a medium sized image on the other. Over the years that site had seen 6 evolutions. as I learned more about scripting I would rework the site. This time I started with a clean sheet of paper (or rather computer screen).

This time around the design would not use tables (except for tabular data in the admin panel), thereby protecting young primates from untimely death (inside joke for my cousin). The site conforms to W3C standards for XHTML and almost passes W3C CSS2.1 standards (more on that later). the first part of that statement means that my site will look and operate the same on all browsers with the possible exception of Explorer 6. This was the stated goal back in May of 2008. The site will also use for the first time in my scripting life MySQL. Something I had been trying to use for years, but could not wrap my head around. Turns out it is not as complicated as I had feared. I can almost say that MySQL is very user-friendly and pretty logically laid out for commands.

The new site also relies heavily on javascript and ajax, by using the very complete JQuery library. I make use of various scripts from various developer that have been reworked to fit what I needed them to do.This helps power the carious slideshows, the scroller on the top of this page, and the thumbnails and picture info in the portfolio pages. Jquery definitely was the saviour for my design, it allowed me to build my site using XHTML instead of relying on Flash movies to do the work.

The blog is all new and is powered by a custom-themed version of Wordpress’ software. It is pretty easy to use and is incredibly powerful. In the old site I used a flat-file blogging script that was a pain to update. I no longer have that problem. I hope to be more faithful in updating the blog since it is so much easier.

The look of my site is something I am very proud of. Sadly, this is the most complicated design I have ever done. It is supposed to look like the popular Flash movie sites used by some of the most popular photographers in the world. I wanted something simple, clean and easy to use. I think I have nailed that this time. The design like I said above is completely compliant with the W3C’s web standards for XHTML, this is something most people or designers don’t care about, for good reason. It takes forever to do and there really isn’t very little to gain. As to the CSS2.1 failure, I don’t really consider that much of a failure. I pass on all points except for a couple of FireFox and Safari specific filters. These are not technically compliant but they do not affect the site in use on other browsers. So I did not worry about it.

The biggest part of the site and the part I have worked the hardest on is the admin panel. I will admit it is not ready to see the light of day yet. I basically have to start over on the admin panel, but this does not affect the part of the site you are looking at. The admin panel allows me to maintain this site easier. I can upload new images to the website, and the scripts I wrote will automatically make 4 versions of the file (thumbnail, small, medium, and large). The script will also search the EXIF data from the original file for ISO, shutter, aperture, focal length. camera type, date taken and file this information into the database. It will also ask me for a title, caption, and keywords for the image and allow me to edit the existing EXIF data. It also allows me to create, move, change, and delete images or whole groups of images which is nice.

While the large version of the file and the keywords are not employed, yet, by the site it does allow me some room to grow with the site. I can add a keyword search feature, and hope to use JQuery’s Lightbox script in the near future. One other thing that makes my new site such a beauty to use is the simplicity of changing the whole look of the site on a whim. The design uses templates, upload a new template and set it up inthe admin panel, presto a new site. This should come in handy if/when I offer the script to others.

Hopefully, everyone will like the site, use the contact page to leave me your thoughts or to report any problems. Thanks for taking a look.