XML, ASP, PHP, DHTML, JScript, Perl, CSS, and SQL: These are all prevalent technologies on today's Internet. At this very moment, I'm willing to bet two facts:
Brother, I don't blame you. Back in the good old days, our webpages were models of simplicity. Had it been 10 years ago, Butt2Face would have looked like this:
John's Butt-to-Face Home-Page!!!
Welcome to my web-site, This site is optimized for Netscape Navigator. Here are some links.
Nintendo home page
Beavis and Butt Head 30-second quicktime clips (they only take 10 minutes to load at the library but you'll have to wait longer at home)
Geocities Webpages
www.Netscape.com
eMail me at lectrohyperjk@hotmail.com
Bye!
Advanced HTML meant knowing the how to change your page colors. Javascript was a bold new technology, known only by advanced coders and kids with thick glasses. If you had a so much as a mouseOver command, you were an absolute hardass. It was a simple life, but pleasant. However, something happened to our innocent little technology: companies got involved.
Nowadays, things are very different. Whatever web site you are searching, it almost always has really complicated crap in it to "personalize" or "enhance" your browsing, usually in the form of advertisements for dick weights. You've probably got over 100 user accounts spanning 100 different websites that you haven't been to in six months. Amazon's "The Page You Made" feature absolutely terrifies me, because it's full of things I would write about, but I never remember making anything. One day I'll come home to find a dead body on my living room floor with a sign taped on his forehead saying "The Guy You Killed."
Travel back in time with me to six months ago, when I started developing the structure for Butt2Face. Due to technical things that give me headaches, I was deciding between two different web languages: Microsoft's ASP, and PHP for UNIX-based platforms. I carefully weighed the pro's and con's for a week, concluding that PHP was highly superior. One problem: Ball State sold its soul to Microsoft in exchange for twenty Alienware computer knock-offs and a copy of Halo 2. Consequently, the choice was already made for me.
Swallowing my face, I developed Butt2Face as an ASP-based website, always with the knowledge that I was missing out on something better.
After the whole censorship fiasco, I moved Butt2Face off Ball State webspace and onto GoDaddy's sexy, $4/month "economy" hosting space. It was a foreign land, but the adjustment was relatively painless. I was given the choice between a Windows server with ASP support, or a Linux server with PHP support. Seeing the Linux option, I started foaming at the mouth. My glasses got foggy, the room started spinning, and everything went dark. I had a fantastic dream. Bill Gates, in the form of thousands of midgets, swarmed toward computer terminals with copies of Windows in hand. A giant arrow cursor flew from the sky, and, with the power and force that only such a phallic symbol could generate, it swatted through the midgets' heads, causing their craniums to burst at the seams, their heads exploding into paterns that rival the beauty of fireworks.
When I awoke from this personalized euphoria, I sadly realized that I would have to choose ASP again, because I had already written the site that way, and it would be a pain in the ass to switch over.
Meanwhile, the Butt2Face forums were going strong on the EZboard server. Suddenly, however, things changed for the worst. Our "gold membership trial" finally expired, and our beautiful forum suddenly flooded with advertisements.
Disturbed and confused, I decided the time had come to host the forums on-site. I shopped around, looking for various ASP-based forum packages, and I was very disappointed, not because my options sucked, but because the authors expected you to pay hundreds of dollars for their crap.
All the while, a PHP-based forum project was staring at me longingly. It was free, open-source, and fully configurable. There was only one problem: Butt2Face is still on the stupid Microsoft Windows ASP machine. Therefore, tonight I decided to Danny-Glover it. Sometime next weekend, Butt2Face is going offline temporarily so I can make the switch to the PHP Linux machine. It will be a lot of work now, but will be a huge improvement for long-term projects. If ASP is a recovering crack adict who scrubs the dumpers at the post office, PHP is the Scandinavian girl who cleans the house in a thong.
