MyPropaganda!

Right, I now think I'm at a point where I can call my new website finished. A bit of the shine has been taken off due to me wanting to launch it before I left for India but what's done is done. It's taken a lot more work than I thought it would but I'm generally pretty happy with the result.

My decision to not use a blogging system like wordpress or textpattern and instead write my own was a nice challenge. The webpage was actually developed in modular form. Each part has it's own php and css files. I started with the tickets and flickr bits first because they were the easiet. The words/comments/search/archive parts are the bloggy bits so I guess they combine to make my own equivelent to the off the shelf packages and were also the most time consuming as you might of guessed.

The webpage was pretty rough when I put it live the night before I headed off on my holiday and I kind of wish I hadn't done that now. The main reason was because I was starting with a new content database and wanted my India stuff to be on here and not stuck in my old text pattern system. When I got back, it took me a while to get motivated to finish it.

I created a system which creates the backend for me as I loathe to create such things. I successfully deployed it on pete's site and had it running on my own site in a couple of minutes. I've called it Ministry of Information in keeping with the whole propaganda theme (the MOI being the department of the british government that produced propaganda during the second world war). I was going to call the frontend system something but then decided that even naming the backend system something was going too far.

I'm pretty sure that this time the site should degrade nicely without css or javascript turned on (something I promised on Pete's site but which has a few issues - I'll probably try fix them next). Almost 99% sure but feel free to prove me wrong.

I have of course not written every single bit of code on here and I've used the following bits of magic by different people : phpFlickr, sajax, moo.fx, json, sIFR3, mint, php inputfilter, akismet and the ma.gnolia php class. Thanks to the people responsible for all their fine work.

Anyway, I at least think I'm finished but I'm sure there's the odd bit here and there that I'll fixing or changing. You may notice on the photo to the left that there is one thing not crossed out. That's something I started working on before I started this redesign and it's going to be a while left until it's finished. Rest assured it's geeky and sad. Lastly, if you have any comments or find any bugs, please leave some words for me to read. Thanks!