How I built this site

I had envisioned a website for myself way back in early 2004 and in fact designed and built one using Dreamweaver and Photoshop around the same time. It was officially launched later that November and was very informal sounding. It had scans of some of my early photographs, poems and other creative work, and was hosted on a free host site and had a free domain name extension (pratap.tk, actually). Since it was built on static HTML pages, I never updated it and the website died a very premature death (free stuff on the net anyway never lasts long).

In Jan 2005 I purchased web space at Vesana.com and this domain name. I had a very simple static HTML website and photo-blog running on publicly available themes, but what I really wanted was a customized and scalable website built from scratch by no one else but me. So, I made several attempts to design my own WordPress theme. I had no clue how to go about coding in CSS or PHP, and with a day job, it was difficult to dedicate learning time. But with the help of the loads of tutorials on the net, I persevered and made it till here. Firefox plugins such Web Developer , Firebug and inspiration from websites such as CSS Mania and Style Gala helped and inspired me on this journey. Adobe Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Flash were the preferred tools to custom design and code this site. And for whatever it is worth, these pages are valid CSS and HTML.

This site uses the excellent and hacker friendly blogging software called WordPress to manage all its content and design. I first heard of WordPress in Jan 2005 when I was blown away by my friend Arun Kale‘s customization and usage of this software as a CMS. Some of his web dev work using WordPress includes Nirali, The Corridor and Split. If you want to attempt your own WordPress theme, I suggest you run it locally by installing the WAMP server on your PC.

The highlights of using WordPress are :

1. Content can be dynamically generated. WordPress has a feature called ‘Pages’ under which you can put any content that lives outside of the blogging hierarchy. So the photoblog on this site uses the regular blogging platform of WordPress, whereas the rest of the site are WordPress Pages.
2. WordPress has a large repository of very nifty plugins. These plugins help you achieve almost anything – and I mean anything you’d want on a website. The photoblog makes use of Yet Another Photoblog while the main pages make use of plugins such as Breadcrumb Navigation XT, Kimili Flashembed etc. A big thanks to the authors of all these plugins! By distributing their code with a GNU type license, they really keep the internet going.
3. WordPress is currently at version 2.x and hence stable and secure.
4. Hacking or building a WordPress theme is easy once you know a bit of CSS and PHP.

As of now I don’t have a roadmap for the future of this website. The galleries and travelogues will hopefully keep expanding, and of course, so will the photoblog. I know of some bugs on this site, which I will hopefully squash, and please report any you find. I really wish to keep myself updated with the latest in web technology, and probably be able to design/code websites in my free time, but only time will tell if I can do that. Until then, I’ll wear this website with pride, at least till the sheen wears off