About WebStractions.com
Hi there! Welcome to a newly revamped version of WebStractions. I am working hard to make it different and hopefully pique your interest. This website will mainly consist of the best of what the Internet has to offer in terms of Web development, and by that I most often will mean client side techniques like HTML, CSS and Php. My hope is that you will all find it educative & informative.
How this website was built
This site has been in transition over the last few years and is an ongoing passion of mine. Allow me to explain a little about how this site has been built. Then you may gain a little more appreciation on what I tend to preach about from time to time, is also what I will tend to teach.
PhpBB Backend
While I have always been on record in touting PhpBB as one of the greatest Forum software since the wheel was invented, I may tend be a little biased. However, I do regard the templating aspects in combination with database queries superior to anything else out there.
With my general knowledge of Php and some inciteful direction from a few portal scripts, I have stripped the forum aspect from the underlying code and created a truly dynamic website in a hope to create my own type of content management system.
Hacking PhpBB is wonderfully simplistic. With hundreds of ideas and hacks available at my fingertips, it is no wonder that I made this my progmatic choice. My hat is off to the PhpBB team, and to all the individuals out there who made this the greatest OpenSource BB software imagined.
Google's Blogger Integration
My choice of Blogger was made a long time ago. It is the center of most of my content.
One of the key aspects of using Blogger was that it published the blog as static Html pages via FTP to the website. All I needed to really do is design a template for it to use, and everything is handled by Blogger. No extra software or server processing needed.
There is also the aspect of being picked up by Google everytime I made a post. Outside of Google knowing about it, they even handle pinging of outside sources. It is a one-stop shop of sorts.
CSS & Semantic Markup
This site is developed using Html-Kit and a third-party add-on, TopStyle Lite. And yes, both are free and offer some of the more advanced editting options that money cannot buy.
Once my basic template was hashed out, it was simple to add pages on the fly (such as this one) with general markup code via a simple template page.
While I do not profess to be a CSS guru, I do try to adhere to most of the Standards when I can. But I do tend to get lazy about this approach ... so please do not hold it against me.
Graphic Images
Graphics for the website are handled by Adobe's very inexpensive Photoshop Elements. I have used many OpenSourced and Professional imaging software, and still come back to this highly under-rated piece of image magic.
Adobe Photoshop Elements is by far the best bang for the buck, and as you may have guessed, I am for the bestest free-est stuff there is. Still, Elements offers image optimization for the web and enough filters & enhancement features to make your graphics more than presentable. For the beginning webmaster, I highly recommend shelling out the less than a hundred to acquire it.
For a glimpse into what Elements can do for you, look at the Header of this page. The header is comprised of two adjustment layers (one gradient, one texture), an image of the Earth, a group of 'flying' text (seen next to the Earth) and the WebStractions reflection text.
