matt hackmann - web developer - artist - nerd

Welcome, one and all, to the brand new and totally spiffy dxprog.com! I'm sure I say it every time I do this, but this iteration is by far the most advanced version of the site to date. I can pretty much wrap up all the updates in a nutshell by saying I've had a lot of fun throwing in all sorts of jQuery and Ajaxy stuff, but I'll itemize.

The front page, for starters, shows the latest and greatest projects and blog posts on the site in the featured pane. The gallery has undergone a huge overhaul and is much more intuitive than it was before. I've also uploaded quite a lot of new content to the gallery page, so go take a gander at that to see what awesome stuff I've been up to. And finally, even the contact is looking spiffier with a picture of yours truly and a link to all the social media outlets I'm currently signed up for.

With the new design out of the way, I'll shift focus to the new {mh}labs; section of the website, where you'll be able to find all sorts of little pojects that have never been released to the general public (and some that have).

The future is bright at dxprog.com, so be sure to bookmark us and return often for all sorts of goody goodness.

It is the eve of the beginning of my PHP/MySQL class. Of course, we should all know by now that CMS programming is child's play for me. However, seeing as my final project for this class is a CMS with front end, I'm taking this opportunity to redesign stuff, and by stuff I mean everthing (even beyond the site itself). Some things to expect from the next iteration:

• Twitter integration on blog page
• A proper portfolio
• Accross the board branding
• Page navigation
• Probably more as I think of it

If my rebrand goes as well as I hope, I shouldn't be updating the design for some time. Geez, we haven't heard that before, have we?

Not sure if that version number is correct or not, but it seems about right.

So, yes, here is the new design. It's not the same one I was working on back in October. No, it's better. I was actually going to use this for my final project in Fabian's class (NOS), but he borked his server and essentially axed the entire set up a blog requirement. I do owe him a lot for this design as it was his, shall we say, technique that inspired me. Design aside, this is the easiest transition to new design/engine I've ever had (thanks in no small part to the fact that I reused the current database structure).

That's all I'm going to blog right now. I'm going to be returning to good old Bartlesville for Christmas in a few days. Perhaps I'll write something then. In case I don't say it in time, I hope everybody has a Kick Ass Christmas!

P.S. Yeah, I added tagging. Maybe I'll add a tag cloud later.

I have culled some scripting from my WIP site to add database caching support to the current scripts. I've been noticing lately that the database has been having trouble keeping up with the higher demand so that is why I rushed this out the door. Overall things are much faster, however, information is only pulled from the database once an hour so there's going to be a delay between, say, somebody adding a comment and it actually showing up on the page. This bug will not plague the next iteration which is set to roll out within the next two weeks.

Pretty soon my site is going to see a "split". That is, dxprog.com will be home to my personal blog whereas matthackmann.net will be the home to my professional blog, resume, and other stuff like that. It more imporatant now than ever that I create a professional image for myself what with my career looming in the future and, sooner than that, the likelihood that I'll be taking on some freelance projects while still in school. So, there you have it. You now have some time to decide which poison you want whilst I make the finishing touches on my other half.