about www.lak.co.za

This site was first started to display and trade my Sisters collection. This started life as a rather ugly plain HTML site. I registered my first domain name in 2001 in order to ensure I had my own piece of the internet and make sure I'd hopefully never have to change my personal e-mail address again. I realized that in order for this site to be run and maintained the way I want it to I'd need to use a database back end and a dynamic scripting language. Being familiar with the Linux operating system and liking the idea of open source software I chose the tools most available to me, PHP and MySQL. Using my database and SQL lessons from Tech I quickly learnt enough PHP to implement a back end. In August 2004 I got a visual upgrade to my Sisters site care of the kind people at Wunderkind Design. In 2002 I placed my first real front page on my site and bought a digital camera. The camera led to me wanting to display a gallery of some of my photos for public view, this saw the creation of my galleries. I once again turned to PHP to create the pages dynamically. I wrote the gallery code to read the directory listing, create a list of files in the relevant directory and then display a list of thumb nails from the chosen directory. I have also added my personal music collection to the site, but have not done too much work on it yet. This site has also picked up some bits and bobs that don't really match the rest of the sub sites. For the most part they are listed on the front page, along with some other sites I like to visit every now and then. I'm still adding pages to this site and improving existing pages. I hope to work a bit on the design, but as yet am not sure which direction that will take... I also maintain a Wiki for The Sisters of Mercy over here. You still reading this? You can send me a mail with any comments you have about this site. Or you can write something in my forum.