Lots of new features added today:
I've completed a blog entry form, and included features for editing and deleting blogs, so it'll be much easier to update. Now that it's easy to post blogs, I can let you know a bit more about who I am and what kind of functions I intend this site to serve.
First, I am a 22 year old web developer named Jason Hutchinson. I live in Southwest Missouri, USA, and I greatly enjoy programming. For several years I've been particularly interested in web development and design, and ASP, HTML, Javascript, and CSS have been my languages of choice. This site marks my first real foray into PHP and MySQL, and at the rate things are going they'll very likely supplant ASP and Access as my preferred web development technologies.
PHP's syntactical similarity with Javascript has made it relatively easy for me to pick up, and development on this site's going much faster than I had expected. Next I'll be adding the usual blog features like tags, archives, trackbacks, and search, as well as a few useful tools for me to use behind the scenes.
I know there is some great open source PHP blog software out there that I could use instead—such as Wordpress—but I really enjoy having built a site up from scratch, and there's really no better way to learn more about PHP and MySQL.
I intend to use this site to chronicle the progress I make in all areas of web development. I want to use it to teach, to learn, and hopefully have a bit of fun in the process. All comments, suggestions, and constructive criticisms are welcome.
I spent a lot of time cleaning up and tweaking the comments system, though most of the changes won't be immediately noticeable. As an administrator I now have the ability to edit and delete comments, which will come in handy if any spam bots find me.
I've decided against using a captcha system, since I did a little research and found that most spammers use just the bots to find a site, then post manually. I'm thinking of working up a blacklist system similar to MT Blacklist, which will search the comment for links to known spammer sites and disallow any comments that do. Another option is a whitelist setup, where I approve a user's email address before their posts can go straight onto the site, but that can discourage comment conversation with new posters. If anyone has any suggestions for a spambot prevention system I'd appreciate it.
Some other comments tweaks include stripping all but certain HTML tags, adding a rel='nofollow' to links, and the ability to link directly to a particular comment.
Next on the agenda: a real blog entry system, so I don't have to use SQL inserts anymore.
It's up and running, is tied to a MySQL database, and now has a comments system built in. Hopefully I won't get slammed by spam bots before I work up a simple captcha.