Over the years I have built a fair amount of basic websites and a few more developed projects that have included user accounts, content management systems, e-commerce, and database driven content. In the early days I used web design tools such as Macromedia Dreamweaver and InDesign, but the more a learned about html, css, and javascript the more I found myself looking at the code rather than the design editor. It got to the point where I would spend more time wrestling with web design software trying to do something it didn’t want to do than I would to just write it out in a decent code editor like notepad++ in the old days or VSCode or PyCharm these days. I also tried cms tools like Joomla and WordPress with some success for more straightforward stuff, like this website. As long as I allow myself to let things be a little out of my control I have found that I can let WordPress take care of many of the details while I concentrate more on content. So it can definitely be useful.

So now that we have these excellent editors, you are only limited by how much you want, or are willing to learn about web development in a more fundamental sense. As far as languages go, for web development I work with either python or php. I go back an forth between them and like them both for different reasons. I like python because of it’s popularity and massive amount of libraries for anything you can imagine, but lately I’ve been leaning toward php for web development due to it’s specialization in doing exactly that.

So the websites we will be looking at here fall into one of three categories. More straightforward websites that are content focused over special functionality, and for these I have been going to WordPress. As I get more and more comfortable in the WordPress world I find that I am able to get a lot done very quickly and focus more on what the website is about rather than the details of putting it together.

Then there are the websites that I have done in a framework, Django specifically, that allows for much more customization and specific requirements. I like Django because things are laid out in a very organized and logical manner but within that framework there is quite a lot of room to customize as you see fit.

Finally the websites I have done in straight PHP. PHP also has frameworks but I like getting more nuts and bolts with PHP just because it has so much web specific functionality and it just happens to be the place where I like to be a bit of a micro manager, mostly because I don’t do that anywhere else, except maybe javascript, but my javascript has been sadly neglected and who knows when I will finally get a grip on that situation.

With that said, I will start pulling together some projects and putting them in here soon, so keep an eye out if you are interested in seeing some examples of my work.

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