I made a lot of changes to the site’s code this weekend. First of all I converted the layout from an old style table style layout to the newer more favoured div/css layout, looks the same right? That’s what it’s supposed to look like, the apparent advantage of using divs and css tags is the cross-browser compatibility, and also it apparently makes it a lot easier for search engines to read your page, therefore making your page ranking go up. It will be interesting to see if it makes any difference in that respect. The only visual change is the navigation bar, I’m using CSS rollovers which load much easier and with less issues than a javascript rollover and because it uses text links as well as images, it’s once again, better for search engines.

The other major change is all the pages, (except for the photo gallery) are XHTML 1.1 Transitional validated and CSS validated, what does this mean to the average person visiting this site? Bugger all, but it helps out my coding skills and makes the site more compatible to browsers other than Mozilla or IE. It would be XHTML Strict, but I still wish to use a few HTML atributes that aren’t used in XHTML, so transitional is the go.

Well, for most people that is possibly the most boring meaningless read ever, oh well.

I’m working on my next PHP project at the moment. This one actually has a practical use. It’s a student or child carer tracking script. It allows any coordinator to add positive and negative comments about a particular child. It uses a MySQL database to store all the information and onlu uses 2 tables, 1 for user management and 1 more the actual inputted data. I’m trying to make this script as user friendly as possible and completely fool proof. I’m using strong form validation to acheive this. It allows the user to output the data in many different ways, they can select a single or all children’s comments to be displayed, they can display only positive or only negative posts, or both, and can sort the data by any column. You can also add photos to go along with the comments. I’ve finished the bulk portion of the script and I should have a demo of it up on this site soon. The real question is what to call it. I’m Thinking Kidtrack or Kidlog, I’m leaning towards the latter. Some extra features I’m planning on adding to it are accident reporting, multiple child management with groups for schools and certificate and notice printing. But I’m just getting ahead of myself now. This app would be great for primary schools, kindergardens and child care facilities.

Righteo, the first test stats page is now working, quite a basic stats page, it displays my top 10 artists and top 10 songs, it looks reasonably pretty too. The next step is to add graphs to go along with the stats, I also need to mess with the date formats so I can automatically cull old music information, since I only have so much space to mess with. But so far it’s starting to look pretty damn good, Sweet!. View My Music Stats.
The Only issue I need to deal with is the fact that SZTracker only sends ID3 Version 1 Tags, nothing higher, I’ve setup the script so that it doesn’t record these empty inputs, but I’ll have to eventually convert all my music to ID3 Version 1 and Version 2, since you can have both on the same file. I might be able to put in a plea to the maker of the Winamp plugin to look at this issue, not really sure it’s still being developed though.

Well my music played script is coming along nicely. I’m using a different plugin now called SZTracker. It sends the information in individual variables instead of cluttered arrays, seems to work much nicer. I’ve set up the basics of it, it displays my last 10 songs played, with a link that opens up a search query of that sonbg with freedb.org. Next on the list for the script is a nice stats page which will show my top 10 tracks played, top 10 artists played and other stuff, maybe with graphs and other such things. Should be quite good once it’s finished/ I think I’ll make it as user friendly as possible and release it on my PHP scripts page, I’ll make an installer that automatically configures the MySQL table, allows the user to setup the template, and change a few other options.

What’s the advantage of working at a school you ask? SCHOOL HOLIDAYS!

Yep it’s that time for me again where I find out just how boring life can be without a job. It’s not all bad though, I get to work on this pretty looking website of mine a bit more. I have once again pulled the audioscrobbler music played script off my page because of constant downtimes of audioscrobbler.com. I’ve decided to take another angle and send and store the music I play directly to my own website, which is much quicker and much more reliable, and the cool thing is I can do what I want with the information I’m collecting. I found a nice little winamp plugin called CGIAmpInfo A nice basic script where you can send the information of the current song playing to any given URL. It sends the info like it submits a form, so you can use that data how you like. I’m in the process of working on the PHP script, but my plans are to simply display my last 10 tracks played on the sidebar, I’ll store the information in my MySQL database, and hopfully once I have the basic script down I’ll start working on something that can display a good stats page of the music I have been playing. Should be quite good once it’s finished. I also need to look into why weather.com doesn’t send the correct image information anymore. On top of that I want to add some more scripts to my PHP scripts page, and get some more work put on my portfolio page, I may even finish an old flash version of this site I have half finished from a year or so back.