Oh hi there, I just completely redesigned my website from the ground up.  When I originally wrote the backend for this website over a decade ago, I pretty much just cobbled together some things I found on the internet and hastily added functionality as I saw fit.  It was pretty messy code with almost no comments, and there was markup mixed in with logic.  Miraculously, this served my needs for quite a number of years with really no issues.  But during that time, if I wanted to add functionality, it was a bit messy.  And the same goes for visual design.  If I want to change how things looked, I had to wade through a bunch of code to find the relevant bits of HTML markup.  Also, all the code was written in an old version of PHP which my web host has been charging me extra to support.  So I decided to embark on a little project. 

I rewrote the entire backend in Python, from scratch.  I chose this language for a couple reasons, the main one being that I've been using it at work and I like the idea of dual-purpose things.  And I said "from scratch" because this wasn't a simple "translate from one programming language to another" thing.  The two languages operate very differently, and I've gotten better at writing code, so I wanted this to be written well.  Modules instead of single files, markup separate from code, testable functions and documentation throughout.  The other reason I wrote it from scratch was because my web host (and a few others I tried) had major problems installing anything, including frameworks like Django and Flask. 

This led to my next major change:  Switching web hosts.  My longstanding prior web host used a fairly old version of Python.  Basic functions that are included in all modern versions of Python were nonexistent.  So I looked around and experimented with a few until I settled on DreamHost, which I originally migrated away from after an unfortunate billing incident.  I also switched to them as my domain registrar, which took a ridiculous amount of time and headache to complete. 

The final major change is that I adopted the Bootstrap framework to hopefully make design and layout easier and more accessible.  I've always "designed" my website my hand, which isn't saying much because I tend to stick with black text on a white background.  But I've always had trouble with sizing and spacing on different screen sizes, so hopefully this will alleviate that. 

All in all, this was a year-plus effort (not full time) and an interesting excursion for me.  I'm still tinkering with things, so there is some missing functionality and broken links, and the layout on mobile looks atrocious.  It's a work in progress. #technology