...and off we go!

Since newyear my Homepage is available again, mainly as a construction site. Step by step I have inserted the basic elements (contact-data,music,video) into the new site. The layout is raw and unfinnished and the content was inserted in form of standard components from music- and videosites. But most important is, that something is on alionsonny.com at all.

Some folks will say "Why? The site was neat once?" Well, the reason for the current redesign is a rather long story. I built up a rather complex system, using php between 2005 and 2007, which became more and more complicated to handle. It was meant to become a full featured content management system. Then I became my own boss (freelancer) and because of this I had less time to work at the site. The solution seemed to be simple: Let's take a readymade free content management system! This was the time when I came across Joomla and at the first glance it seemed to be the perfect solution. Posting new articles was very simple. BUT: The whole thing was not very suitable for multimedia stuff at all and so I had to built quite a lot of custom mudules. Also not THE problem, because I was able to port modules from the old solution to Joomla. Well, someday the site was complete and I thought everything was finnished now. Icouldn't be more wrong...

I allready read at some sites that Joomla had a not just a few security gaps, which made it possible for badminded people to hack, change and deface websites or even turn them into virus distributers. But, so I thought, I have a good provider and all the biggest security issues like FTP-Access turned off. To make it short: At the end my website was hacked about 2 times a week, defaced and even passwords were changed so I had to fix it in the user-database to regain adminitrative access to my own website. That went badly on my nerves. When a hacker turned my site into a virus distributer it was the END! Joomla had to GO! No security measures were successfull. It couldn't go on like that.

What to do? Back to the old homegrown system? Just as I said: Not enough time for that. A old principle from my time as a software developer came to my mind: KISS -> Keep It Simple, Stupid! This means: No technical overkill if it can be done simple. Why using php for a simple website? Why a big content management system for a simple Homepage? I realized that all the time I was shooting with cannons at sparrows instead on focussing on the core work.

Because of THAT my new site is pure HTML, formatted with CSS, just like in the old days. Without php, using pure HTML hackers have NO chance to attack the site. Ok, everything is not so super-geeky now, but who cares aside of the own ego? You, dear visitors of my site , want to watch the site, listen to music, watch videos and most of you do not want to know how the sites internals work.

So I'll build up the rest of the site in the next days and that's it. That's it, well said: Enough words and off to work! There's a lot to be done and more and more folks ask for new music.

Sincerely

Sonny