About This Web Site

I want to list some details about construction of this website

  • All styles, fonts and colors are implemented in one CSS file
  • There is a private Admin area that enables another top menu tab to allow online CSS color changes, real time content editing and other behind the scenes stuff. I can change colors using a form, see the effects immediately and save the changes for later editing or update the entire in one step.
  • The graphics for the top menu and the tooltip balloons were not created in an image editor. No crazy CSS is used. When I change the site colors, new graphics are automatically generated by ImageMagick in the proper sizes. I don't think many sites do that.
  • The top and side menus are NOT hardcoded. They are generated by PHP code from data for every page and always indicate where you are in the navigation of this site.
  • PHP is used extensively to build the pages.
  • AJAX technologies such as JavaScript, XML, JSON and MySql are used for the page comments, the front page random photo and the menus in the photo areas.
  • The Google Maps API is used to display photo locations based on GPS coordinates.
  • The photo pages download information in the background using AJAX and preload images so the user has a very fast, positive experience.
  • There are more than 10,000 photos and videos on this site. One neat feature is the ability to view photos by a person's name. There is an individual album for the photos of every single person identified in a photo on this site. I manage all my photo data in a custom Java application on my PC which builds the code to be uploaded to this site.
  • I take great pride in having a site that is easy to understand, easy to navigate and provides useful content. I get many emails complimenting my site and it's ease of use.
  • I use Wordpress on the site for the blog, SMF for the forum and phpGedView for the genealogy database. Everything else is my own code. I do not use any frameworks. I have nothing against frameworks, but I want to learn this stuff for myself.
  • I use WampServer on my PC as a development environment which combines Apache, MySQL and PHP in one preconfigured package. Very nice.