About MySite

Welcome to Wolframite Reign, my name is Drew Masci and this site is designed for my projects. Here I will discuss various different things such as my software as well as myself. Currently Wolframite Reign is a test site for my experimental website software that I've named MySite. Throughout the course of my career I've been developing various websites from scratch as well as through the user of development packages such as DotNetNuke or WordPress. However what I don't like about most of these systems is that they're so secure that I can't do any admin stuff in the background. Everyone I know keeps saying "don't reinvent the wheel" but some times wheels don't cut it. I dislike how these systems are so limited but I appreciate that they're secure. This is why I wanted to develop a website package that has all the functionality and none of the appearance.

Everything you see before you has been developed using MySite and has a CSS script applied to it to make it appear as it does. If you turn off your styles you'll see next to nothing is visually done through the PHP aspect of the website and it's all visually controlled via the CSS script. Currently MySite is tailored towards artists and/or webcomics. The reason for the "and/or" is because the system can do both at the same time.

The way the MySite works is to use readily available technologies for a multitude of different platforms. For example say you develop a website using .ASP and suddenly your having to pay a fortune for your Windows hosting server, you may say "I am going to find somewhere cheaper!" but all you find within your price range is Linux or Unix servers. Now because you've developed your website with .ASP you've got a problem as .ASP officially only works with Windows. This is the problem that MySite gets around. The mentality of MySite is to build on one server and port it anywhere else. This is why all the technology used is readily available on all platforms, thus the technology used to make this all possible is PHP and MySQL.

MySite

Future Proofing:

If you talk to any programmer, professional or otherwise, they say that future proofing is a complete waste of time. The concept of future proofing is to anticipate the needs of the user ahead of time and allow for an easy transition into what they could need.

This is why MySite is built from PHP & MySQL with a little CSS. Reason for this is quite simple, PHP and MySQL have been around for a very long time and it is supported by all server platforms. I want you to be able to depend on MySite as a web package that can be taken anywhere. Also MySite can easily be up rooted and placed anywhere else without the requirement of weeks of preparation. This is why MySite is built with future proofing in mind.

Just PHP & MySQL?:

PHP and MySQL were both chosen for this web package for a simple reason, they're free for anyone to use. MySite's target audience are amateur artists and writers who want to attempt to get themselves to a head start in life with their own website they can consider a portfolio without having to pay through the nose to have it developed for them.

As a professional web developer and programmer I would charge you £40 ($66.81) per webpage, say you were to have a simple website with 7 web pages, that would cost £280 ($467.70). A lot of artists don't have that kind of equity to afford developing their own website. The purpose of MySite is to help these artists develop their skills and fame through MySite and it's 100% free for anyone to use (minus hosting costs).

Java Support:

Ok I may now proceed to shoot myself in the foot but I hope you're willing to hear me out. MySite doesn't use Java for a simple reason, I don't like it. Sun Microsystems gave Java a very amazing conceptual idea "Develop somewhere, run anywhere". The meaning behind somewhere isn't my PC or your PC, it means the Operating System. Java is designed that if I develop an application on a Windows computer and move it over to Mac's Snow Leopard OS it should run exactly the same. This is unfortunately not the case. Java has been developed of the years to be very unstable and run very differently given a different Operating System. I don't like the idea of using Java to insert BB-code or open a web page because the last thing I want is for you, the user, not to be able to use MySite.

Supported Browsers:

MySite is designed to run on as many different web browsers as possible. It is currently fully supported by Opera, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox & Safari. Unfortunately Internet Explorer isn't supported due to it's inability to work with CSS and I'm not prepared to develop Java Scripts to make it work for Internet Explorer alone when aprox. 75% of the world users one of the other 4.

Auto Updater:

Because it's difficult to keep things up to date, MySite has been built with an auto update feature. The aim is to allow you, the user, to keep things up to date as you see fit. With the aid of the settings.php file you can set it up that it will automatically update your server or it will instead update your server when you choose to. This way you don't need to continuously return to Wolframite Reign to check to see if there is an update you need to install yourself.

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