About This Site
Welcome to the SIXTH version of my personal web site!
Goals achieved in this version:
- SEO-optimized web pages, navigation and URLs
- Hierarchical, breadcrumb navigation (which need not match nesting of URL paths)
- Eliminate frames and "every page is default.php?schr101=..." tree view used in previous version
- Use CSS for both styling and positioning
- Retain non-public, authentication-required handling used in previous version
- Retain ability to navigate site without Javascript (also present in previous version)
- Retain ability to change pages and navigation by normally editing only two files (also present in previous version)
- Use a more professional theme and rebuild site to highlight career and past projects
- New "Site Changes" box on many pages
- Borrow the Macintosh-like "Fisheye" icon focus effect for my top-level sections from captimes.com (Madison, WI's "Capital Times" online newspaper)
Future goals for this version:
- Consider adding a personal blog (and tag cloud lead-in from most pages)
- Consider using small qooxdoo application for authentication
- Consider migrating "www.lampefamily.us" to new domain
- Consider adding style support and detection of mobile browsers
This site took about 24 hours to create over 9 nights between April 23 and May 5, 2010. The core site was handwritten in PHP, CSS and Javascript. Other code or packages used include:
- Stefan Petre's Fisheye code, to provide the 'Macintosh" effect on the icon navigation
- jQuery, mainly in support of the Fisheye effect
Project Schedule:
- Night #1: Created new layout mockups using Paint.NET and PaintShopPro 6. (about 4 hours)
- Night #2: Created static HTML prototype and production-ready CSS stylesheet to match layout mockups using TextPad 5. Also collected and modifed Javascript ".js" scripts (based on jQuery) for "Fisheye" icon focus effect, also using TextPad 5. (about 4 hours)
- Night #3: Created URLPath-to-NavBreadcrumbs schema and mapped old site content into new paths and breadcrumbs using Windows Notepad. (about 2 hours)
- Night #4: Wrote php library to allow individual pages to consume new URLPath-to-NavBreadcrumbs schema and converted schema into included php file using TextPad 5. (about 2 hours)
- Night #5: Enhanced php library to parse and display child nodes, built a simple site map that also consumed the schema and added direct include execution protection. (about 2 hours)
- Night #6: Started the content conversion with the site navigation and home page. Updated home page and other content. Also ported existing access control and cleaned up related forms. (about 4 hours)
- Night #7: Wrote new "software" page and coverted four existing software pages. Realigned IE display issue through conditional debug comments. (about 4 hours)
- Night #8: Completed public content conversion: pared down fun pages but left private content for another night. Posted public content to live site. (about 4 hours)
- Night #9: Completed private content conversion and fixed various items on live site. (about 2 hours)