Renaissance

This post marks the rebirth of the Without Precedence website as it is the first post after the site disappeared this December. Going back, it started innocently enough, I thought, when my website was one day unavailable. My web host had not had a stellar performance record previously so I paid it no heed. A couple of days later, though, the severity of the situation hit me when I visited my local geek news dealer - my we host (Needhost) had been one of the most recent victims of the downturn and they had to turn the key.

There was no information to be had from Needhost itself and it seemed that all data was lost. I must admit I was a little  panicked at this point, after establishing that I could find no backup of any of my data, not to speak of the website code itself. Before continuing this tale of woe, I should point out that this old website code was anything but pretty. It was my first ever attempt at a non-static website and it showed. With the exception of a few includes for a page header, footer and menu, the code consisted of one huge php file with a lot of conditional statements in it. Ugh.

Anyways, I decided that the time was due for a new foundation to be built. Having just finished another website project, I was ready to get my hands dirty and from those efforts did this page appear. I have built the entire page from the ground up, avoiding existing frameworks and components. One might argue that this is an unnecessary effort but it's a good learning experience and the freedom it provides is not to be scoffed at either - I only hope that it hasn't resulted in too many bugs.

As a result of this effort I have produced a sort of lightweight website framework, slightly influenced by CakePHP (which I spent about 30 minutes finding out I din't want to use). As I get the framework code cleaned out I will be posting it here so that others might get some use out of it.

This whole experience has given me the kick needed to produce a proper website and it has also given me a chance to revisit the purpose and focus of the site. And of course, I have learned the timeless lesson of the value of backups.

In all fairness to my old web host, I should mention that they later not only offered access the people's data but had also made a transition deal with another host, which would allow you to transfer your lost subscription fee and forego the initial signup fee. But alas, this news came too late for me to take advantage of.