I can't remember the last time I had a chance to just sit down and play with the code for this site. After taking one look at the current PHP code, I decided it just wasn't worth the hassle trying to fix it. I originall wrote the backend of this site when I first learnt PHP and it was not a pretty sight. I want to believe I could never write such horrible code, but I was learning so it's predictable that the code would suck.

I've now rebuilt the entire backend of the site using a much nicer object oriented approach, restructured the database so that it actually makes sense and re-written all of the database queries so that they're fast(er). I've also taken the opportunity to fix some of the front-end bugs and updated the main style of the site (which was called "Flux", but is now called "Flux-Refresh", since it's pretty much the same style but with a more polished look). I would like to create a new frontend style for the site at some point, but it's likely to take a while since I have little free time.

My next task is to organise the content of the site. The projects section in particular is horribly outdated and I have some new projects to add. I've started to rebuild my photo album so that it looks better and is easier to maintain. Also, as part of the reorganisation I'm going to start actually writing some decent notes for the site. In the past I've generally just posted a link to something which I found interesting, or talked about new versions of browsers and how they handle standard compliance, etc. From now on, anything like that I'll just post on my Twitter account and the notes on this site will be more like full articles or tutorials on a particular idea. I already have a few ideas drafted out which I'll post up soon. It would be nice to actually get some content added every now and then rather than me just being too lazy to update, as it has been in the past.

In a bold move, I've also completely dropped IE6 support. This is my personal site, and less than 1% of visitors use IE6. While I always like to make things available to as wide an audience as possible, it's just not worth my time to do twice the work to get this working in IE6. I'm sick and tired of having to deal with such a completely useless browser. So you now get a non-styled version of the site if you use IE6. If you don't like it, tough! We don't like your kind around these parts!