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17 Mar 2020 : Everything about this site has changed #
Today is an important step forwards for this site. The whole site has just been moved from a Windows IIS server and generated using ASP reading data from an MS Access database, to a Linux server running Apache and served using PHP and a MySQL database. It's gone from WIAA to LAMP.
It's been written in ASP since 29th January 2006, when I converted it from the original static HTML. So this makes it the second major changes since it started life on a Sun server at the University of Birmingham back in November 1998. From static, to ASP and now to PHP.
Hopefully the site will look and work the same, but in the background, everything has changed. Every piece of ASP code had to be re-written and there were also quite a few changes needed to get the CGI code to work. However, for the latter, fewer than you might expect given they were written for Windows in C. My decision to go with ASP back in 2006 may not have been the best one, but I made a better decision going for all open source libraries for my CGI code.
As well converting the code, I also took the chance to improve it in places, with better configuration and slightly better abstraction. There's a short post covering my experiences of transitioning the code from ASP to PHP if you're interested. You can also read my original plan to convert the site when it became one of my New Year's Resolutions (one down, three to go).
The one external change you might notice is actually quite important. It's long overdue, but the site now finally has a TLS certificate. Combined with the removal of all tracking, I'm now happy with the security.
There may be some glitches to iron out with the new code, so if you notice strangeness, please let me know.
It's been written in ASP since 29th January 2006, when I converted it from the original static HTML. So this makes it the second major changes since it started life on a Sun server at the University of Birmingham back in November 1998. From static, to ASP and now to PHP.
Hopefully the site will look and work the same, but in the background, everything has changed. Every piece of ASP code had to be re-written and there were also quite a few changes needed to get the CGI code to work. However, for the latter, fewer than you might expect given they were written for Windows in C. My decision to go with ASP back in 2006 may not have been the best one, but I made a better decision going for all open source libraries for my CGI code.
As well converting the code, I also took the chance to improve it in places, with better configuration and slightly better abstraction. There's a short post covering my experiences of transitioning the code from ASP to PHP if you're interested. You can also read my original plan to convert the site when it became one of my New Year's Resolutions (one down, three to go).
The one external change you might notice is actually quite important. It's long overdue, but the site now finally has a TLS certificate. Combined with the removal of all tracking, I'm now happy with the security.
There may be some glitches to iron out with the new code, so if you notice strangeness, please let me know.
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