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Programs Used Currently This version of the site is now entirely in PHP. PHP is a server-side language, meaning a script runs on the server and finds things out and then makes an HTML page for you to see. Anyway, it's what the kids are using these days. Hopefully it stays popular for a while. At least now I'm writing in something common that everyone uses. Oh, and I typed it allll in Notepad baby. YEAH. Previously - Domino Site I started out using Netscape Composer to do my first webpage and the start of this one. And I learned one thing: Composer is the web tool of Satan. If you know ANYTHING about HTML, do NOT use it ever. Recently, a bright beacon from the lap of God came to me, and HomeSite4 was delivered unto my computer. It is truly a blessing. And now, it's all in Domino baby. I'll elaborate on the greatness of this later. Allaire HomeSite 4 HomeSite has a really nice layout in the program. you have a little Windows Explorere-type file browser in the left margin, making it easy to get to your stuff. In the main editing pane, there are 3 tabs at the top: Edit, Browse, Design. Edit is the straight HTML, Design is your Composer equivalent, and you can figure out the mysteries of Browse on your own. When editing the HTML, it recognizes tags, scripts, and types of page elements and color-codes them. Praise the lord! Also, a few little things you appretiate while using it: auto-indenting in script, and remembering the folder you were last editing in when you open the program. I don't know anything about the Design features, since I didn't use them because I didn't really understand it immediately. I'm sure they're easy to use if you do something like "read the directions", but I didn't have time for that. Domino Designer I know no one has ever heard of this, or has access to it, but I should still give Lotus credit. The whole site is done in Domino and is hosted on a Prominic.NET server (the company I used to work for - sign up with them today! They kick ass! <-- no bias there ). What is Lotus Notes? Lotus Notes is a groupware application. It hardly seems like any regular "program" to me. It's database software, but not hardcore like DB2; it's dynamic and easy to use. This is what I use for my mail, address book, calendar and this website. Some entire companies are run based on it. They use it for timelogs, payroll, project collaboration and everything. Quite cool. What the hell is Domino then? What Domino does is convert Lotus Notes databases to HTML (or Java for some things) so that they can be accessed over the web "on the fly". Which means you just create a database and then access it through a web browser and Domino will automatically convert it so you can use it without you having to do anything at all. I'm not very good at explaining this; sorry. Why did you do your site in Lotus Domino? Because I was REAL tired of having to create/update HTML pages all the time. Plus, I can do some cool-ass, dynamic things that you can't possibly do with straight HTML. For example - submit things like picture comments or feedback. For my old HTML page I had to create a new page for every daily pic, then upload it, then change links in the middle of piles of HTML. Horrible. Now, I can do anything from the Lotus Notes welcome page. I have 4 frames: one with my inbox, one with my calendar, one with my to do list, and one with the Recent Updates view of my webpage so I can see what people have submitted. It also has buttons to create Journals, Daily Pics, and so forth right from the Welcome page. All I have to do to update the site now (Daily Picture, for example) is to click "New Daily Pic", attach the image, type a caption and hit Ctrl-S to save it. That's it. The code on the main page of my site automatically grabs and displays a link to the most recent Daily Picture so I don't have to change a link to anything. Sooooo great. Adobe Photoshop 5.5 All imaging is done with Photoshop 5.5. If you have several hundred dollars laying around that expire tomorrow, I suggest you spend them on Photoshop. (Unless you can pirate it, but I wouldn't know anything about that. That's bad kids, bad! ;-) ) Anyway, it is wonderful. One of the about 3 or so programs used by the professional graphic artist people. I can't imagine what I could do if I actually knew how to use all the tools correctly. Escpecially that damn pen tool!..........*sigh* |
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