Site Info & Credits

This website not only serves as my personal site but was also a great proof-of-concept for using WordPress as a CMS. WordPress is widely regarded as premiere blogging software… but its potential as a CMS is profound. So many web designers and developers already have WordPress blogs and are familiar with skinning and modding them… and the administrator interface is so easy-to-use that even potential customers could use it. ;-) Pound for pound you won’t get more bang for your buck when developing a dynamic website. WordPress works great, is free, and is easier to use for what it does than anything else I’ve ever even heard of.

This site is powered by WordPress running on Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP.

Everything you see that is not part of the site’s physical design is dynamic. This is extremely significant. ALL images are called out in CSS or in MySQL… not the source files. All main textual content is stored in MySQL. Even this static text you’re reading right now is a stored WordPress post. On my Web Design, Programming, and Guitar & Music pages the lists of sites, projects, and bands (respectively) are all WordPress posts with categories matching the page title. The links at the bottom of every non-Home page are actual WordPress “Blogroll” links with categories matching the page title. Except for the Home, Portfolio and Gallery pages, each page is built from identical PHP code.

The inspiration for this site design came from my experience as a nuclear engineer (hence the magenta trifoil and glowing green), and from the open source work of Andreas Viklund‘s template Andreas07 and the public domain design BiPolar by DemusDesign. While my layout is very similar to BiPolar I have rewritten and expanded most of the code to be more cross-browser compatible and for handling extended functionality. All my coding was done using Notepad++.

All graphic work in this design was created by myself using Adobe’s Photoshop and Fireworks software. The theme is influenced by the sterotypical view of nuclear byproduct as glowing flourescent green goop and radiation as bright, sparkly energy.

I designed this site using progressive enhancement so that I could be search-engine friendly and accessible while also providing a rich user experience to those with Flash and JavaScript-enabled browsers.

I use sIFR to style my headings for users with Flash-enabled browsers. NO images were used for any headings on my site (except for the bullet, of course).

I use Facebox for all in-browser image popups enjoyed by users with JavaScript-enabled browsers.

I use the following WordPress plugins:

  • Event Calendar by Alex Tingle :: used to store and syndicate my guitar schedule
  • PHP Secure Contact Form by Mike Cherim and Mike Jolley :: powerful contact form with exceptional accessibility, usability, and anti-spam and anti-exploit security features
  • Kimli Flash Embed by Michael Bester :: Used for embedding Flash content into my pages and posts (such as my Portfolio page)
  • IImage Browser by Martin Chlupac :: used for all my content image management in the WordPress admin area
  • AGGRSS by Per Soderlind :: used to aggregate my blog feed on my Rantings page and on my Home page
  • runPHP by James Van Lommel :: used to execute PHP code within WordPress pages and posts – this is indispensable when using WordPress as a CMS
  • The Excerpt Reloaded by Kaf Oseo and Rob Bresalier :: used to display partial post content for web designs, programming projects, and bands on the web design, programming, and guitar & music pages, respectively.