Site Status Update

So, last time I posted site news here it was because I’d just barely gotten the thing on-line and looking vaguely reasonable. Now things are looking a bit more together, though still more than a bit rough around the edges. The main thing is that now I’ve got most of the model-building information from my old site online in a nice format, where before I’d have had to redirect you to the mirror of the old site in order to get photos of any of my projects or anything like that…

At this time I’d like to reflect on why I finally chose to get a real web host. Basically, most of it comes down to one thing:

Comcast Sucks

You’ll hear a lot of people saying Comcast this and Comcast that, and I know that people aren’t normally inclined to believe it when someone has something bad to say about Comcast, but hear me out. For starters, they promised to upgrade the web storage their subscribers would get, from a measly 25MB up to 1GB. Great news, right? What a fucking waste of time. They promised that upgrade within the month, and now four months later still nothing. Any time I wanted to upload something to my Comcast page I had to delete something. I’m sick of it, and I’m sick of their bullshit excuses about why they haven’t got it done yet. In reality that storage upgrade is vaporware. They told people they’d upgrade web storage just to keep them from jumping ship. Well, now that my webpage and e-mail address are hosted somewhere else, there’s nothing keeping me with Comcast should I ever decide it’s time to jump ship…

That’s the short version, at this point I feel like Comcast’s not worth the effort for any further criticism. They just suck, OK?

The move to real hosting has had all kinds of great features. A slight increase in available storage (approx 2000000% more storage than Comcast provided), PHP, SQL, Jabber server, Unix shell access – and quite reasonably priced. Good stuff.

Because I have some elbow room now, I’m not only bringing out the content from my current Comcast webpage but also bringing back stuff that I was forced to delete to save space. But beyond just porting over that content I’m trying to improve the webpage as well. You may have noticed some of these innovative new features:

  • Instead of a bit of text linking from a page to an image, the link displays a smaller version of the image, conveniently scaled to about the size of one’s thumb.
  • Linked images load through an elaborate client-side programming structure, allowing one to toggle one’s way through the images without navigating away from the page in which it is presented
  • Work-in-progress data is now presented through a dynamic “web logging” system, in which data may be organized chronologically or divided up into various catergorizations
  • Individual web pages on the site now include a standardized linking structure which allows one to quickly redirect the browser back to other, largely unrelated areas of the site.
  • Web site now features a rectangular graphic at the top of each page, with which the reader is reminded of what site they are currently visiting

Of course this all is terribly revolutionary, ground-breaking stuff, taking my web presence far beyond the simplistic organization of the old site. I think other people on the web will probably see what I’ve done here and go, “Hey, that’s a good idea. I should do something like that, too.”

The site’s still not quite done yet, but I think it’s far enough along now that I’d feel OK about posting new WIP and such on it. Oh, and there’s no current plans to start a web forum, if anyone’s wondering. :D

I actually have had this sitting around on my computer since 1996…