Behind the pages

There is a story behind the born of this website.

When I work on this page, it is almost the finalization. Recalling the day I started on working this website, it has been 10 months already. Why it takes so long to make a website? There is an interesting story behind it.

When a project takes a long time to be finished, usually it is the result of new problems keep on showing up.

When I decided to update my website ten months ago, I wanted to do something different. I wanted to combine the technology and design into my website. Well, it sounds simple but it does not. Previously, I primary used Netscape Composer to write the webpage. Obviously it is not enough for advanced visual effect. Therefore, I chose to use Dreamweaver and Firework.

After I spend few weeks to get familiar with these two new software, I found that their graphical functionality is not as powerful as Photoshop, especially for color enhancing. Therefore, I moved my concentration to Photoshop. That's another couple of weeks. Afterward, I had another challenge: Where should I store my website?

Initially, I wanted to put my website on my school account. However, I am not quite satisfy with the network management. Therefore, I decide to host it on my old laptop. I put the Windows 2003 to my laptop and I was looking forward to its cool result. However, I was shocked because my system got inflected by virus 20 minutes after the installation. Well, I immediately made another decision: I go to Unix.

I picked FreeBSD finally because it is one of the most secure server system today. Being a Windows user, it takes me a while to adjust the culture. It likes an elementary student to study random processes: a huge jump.

After several months, I finished learning the technique I need to make a website. Meanwhile, there were some minor problems happen such as choosing between ASP and PHP, learning SQL database and something like that. Anyway, they are similar problems of what I have experienced.

Perhaps this is a typical life of making a new product or researching a new technology. You thought you have enough knowledge to handle the job initially, but it usually ends up that you need to learn a lot before you can start working on the project.

So far, I only mentioned the technology of this website. Now, let me talk about the design part.

The cover page of this website is a result of my friend and me. We had had brainstorming for a week and we had made more than 50 designs. Finally, it became the foundation design of this website. Basically, every page is just the variation of this fundamental work.

The process of manufacturing this website is not simple but it is an enjoyable experience. I hope you will enjoy my work.

Last updated: December 22, 2010