Today I finally get around to updating my website. Did you notice? But being a web developer by trade I can't just add a bit of new content and make a few design changes. Oh no. That's just too easy. Instead I have to re-write the whole damned thing from scratch in a completely different technology...
So goodbye to the old PHP site, with content stored in a bespoke MySQL database and a hand-written administration section. You were good at the time, but too damned difficult to update, so I never bothered - with the inevitable result that the site slowly died from neglect. If there were social workers for websites then they would have taken mine into care long ago.
Instead, I've switched over to the "dark side" and gone all 'Bill Gates' and developed the new site in Microsoft .NET and C# (with a sprinkling of XML, XSLT and jQuery). But this time I've been sensible and created the site using the fabulous open-source content management system, Umbraco. This means I'm free to do the interesting stuff and leave Umbraco to handle the tedious storage and retrieval of content. Which means, in theory, that I should update this site more often and, who knows, even write something of interest.
I should also point out I'm a programmer and not a designer, and freely admit to making this design up as I went along. My only remit was to make it valid HTML (hand-crafted at that) and to play around with CSS 3 style-sheet features, now that most decent browsers support them (sorry, IE users, that excludes you from the rounded-corner party).
Hopefully, then, I will keep this updated. At least until the technology becomes obsolete in a few months time. Oh, and I also welcome any comments you might have (especially those from those nice Nigeria gentlemen offering me money...).
