And so it begins.

It's been a long time coming since I launched my personal website 17 months ago but I'm glad to say that v2 of sanjayderbyshire.com is finally complete! While I occasionally did get some hits (and some job offers, oddly enough) on the old website, to say that there are some changes for the new version would be an understatement. With a few small exceptions, pretty much everything on this site has been coded from scratch (and I have many tens of thousands of lines of code to prove it!)

The main motivation for the new version is that lately, I've gotten questions from people about the various projects I work on, world events, soccer, music, etc. so I intend to use this website as a way to publish those thoughts. Now, while I'm not quite conceited enough to think that many people will actually care what I post on this website, I've found that after settling into the 'rest of my life' routine, writing and expressing myself in some fashion is quite therapeutic to me so if I can achieve that while interesting a couple people in the process, I will be fully content.

This rest of this post will mostly be a rundown of what's changed and what still needs to be changed in the future. So come along and celebrate with me all of the features that will almost certainly never be used!

• Mobile first design - quite simply, my old website sucked on mobile, now it looks half ok. But I've also added all sorts of effects for desktop too. Check out my new home page HERE!
• ALL URL Handling - my website can handle all URLs now. And bogus ones too. Try it by clicking here (DO IT!) - Or make up your own random URL at my website
• Comment form - please use this to send anonymous love letters to me (or when something is broken on this website so I can fix it)
• Pointless feature #1: A user system - mostly just for me but you're welcome to create an account if you want!
• A blogging system - a way for me to create posts easily (under 'MUSINGS' tab)
• A comment system - can be done as a logged in user or as an anonymous user
• A tagging system - I can assign tags to every article so a user can find all articles with the same tag. For example, Pointless feature #2: a subscription feature - get unobtrusive notifications every time I post an article with the subscribed tags (such as my BB8 or smart home projects, soccer, etc. - this one is actually kind of useful and I'm hoping a couple people utilize this one in case the want to keep up with a certain topic). Subscribe here!
• Pointless feature #3: 'like' feature - for posts and comments reinforce my ego, please
• Fancy checkboxes - Example here - I honestly spent way too long on this but apparently check boxes are not easily modifiable in CSS...
• Pretty much all the CSS on this site while I'm at it is new (even if a lot looks the same)
• ALL URL Handling (part 2) - my website is smarter about getting the information you are looking for. For example, going to: http://www.sanjayderbyshire.com/musings/2016/7 - will show all of my posts from July of 2016 (this wasn't trivial)
• New page rendering js
• Lots more! (I'm starting to get pretty tired writing this...)

• Improve my CSS skills - they are quite terrible still and while I can get the job done, I'm quite slow about it
• Update old content - practically all of the 'navbar pages' have old content (I think the photography pictures are all more than two years old...)
• Rebrand my UI - essentially, my logo sucks
• Improve pop-up messages for event handling - only implemented on some events
• Combine user and subscriber interfaces (in the unlikely event someone wants to be a user, these interfaces should be accessible in the same place
• Add more videos for my 404 pages
• Boilerplate functionality, efficiency

The main difference between the original website and v2 is that this original website was static and v2 is dynamic. The difference is that for the former, I had ~10 static files (ie. never changed) that would get served by my webserver the same way, every time. v2 is dynamic, meaning that I can configure my website any way I want and thus, your experience could vary heavily from session to session. Going dynamic allows me to do many things such as having databases, handling any assortment of URLs, a blogging system, a user system, a subscription system, etc.

Now many people will think that a lot of my changes are overkill (and they probably have a fair point) but the second big takeaway from all the changes I've made it that I pretty much don't have to write anymore code that I don't want to write. The main goal of this update was to abstract the coding process so I can completely update my website from a browser without entering a single line of code. While I realize this sounds an awful like an actual blogging or website service, I have complete control over every detail of my website (and my only cost was a domain). So I definitely do intend to use this website quite substantially going forward.

ABOUT SANJAY

Ukulele strummer, milk enthusiast, and sushi connoisseur. Was the leading scorer on my amateur soccer team last season. I'm also a true nerd at heart and an aspiring rocket scientist.