About PageMac

PageMac has been my little corner of the web since 1999 and has evolved several times.

Originally a website about web page design, 'Page' came from 'web page' and 'Mac' (which was also in my alias of the time, 'SqueakMac') came from Macintosh. On this website there were JavaScript examples, HTML tutorials, small programs I made, flash games, and web content. It was just a simple personal website where I posted things that amused me, mostly related to programming.

PageMac was first created on Angelfire, a free web hosting service. I was in middle school, and had no money to pay for true web hosting services or a domain name. Instead of a domain, PageMac used the popular-at-the-time “cjb.net” free domain forwarding service to use the URL “pagemac.cjb.net”. Eventually, AngelFire started inserting ads into free hosted websites, so I moved PageMac to another free hosting service that didn't insert ads, Tripod. I also started adding more web design and programming content. During this period of time, I changed the layout and style of PageMac many times as I experimented and learned more about web design. Most of the content was static HTML and a small amount of JavaScript for layout theme management.

Tripod also started inserting ads on to free hosted websites, so I built a machine with FreeBSD and Apache and used it to host PageMac at my house over my cable internet connection. I also finally purchased the domain name “pagemac.com”. Now with full control of the sever, I was able to start web programming with PHP and added more programming content and dynamic website features. I added phpBB2 forum, a local file hosting service called “PageMac [root]”, and hosted other programming websites for fellow online developers. From about 2004 to 2007, there was a very active forum community. Most discussions were about software development, especially D++. The community would regularly contribute to an online repository of D++ scripts. I also hosted an IRC server, “irc.pagemac.com”. This was a pretty cool time for PageMac.

The front page had custom PHP script to display a list of short update entries that were stored on an admin phpBB2 forum. It also showed the most recent forum postings with a layout that I was constantly tweaking. There was also static HTML section for my favorite projects, like D++.

My friend Sam offered to host PageMac on his server in a real datacenter with real bandwidth. PageMac lived on those servers for many years. I briefly considered developing the PageMac community further than forums to include publicly posted code examples, tutorials and such. The forum had centralized around a small group of members who still enjoyed discussing programming topics.

While I was in college, the community around PageMac slowly dwindled. I removed all of the mostly outdated programming and web development tutorial content and began focusing the website more on my personal projects. During this time, all of the web content on PageMac was still coded in pure HTML and PHP. This made it time consuming and sometimes annoying to add content to the website. The phpBB forum was mostly empty and only used to post short updates to the front page. Web development was exploding at the time and there were plenty of content management systems (CMS) available that could make it easier to post content. I considered several JavaScript frameworks as possible options. But, the quickly accelerating pace of web development was in stark contrast to my evolving interests into hardware, RF and embedded devices as I studied electrical engineering at Georgia Tech. The website had fewer updates during these years.

I moved PageMac to BlueHost to get easier access to server management tools. The phpBB forum was completely dropped. The front page was revamped show long form text blog content using a simple PHP script with mySQL for data storage. Text entries were easy to post, but nothing with pictures or any real text styling. My portfolio of project pages were still written in pure HTML so they looked good, but they it was much more time consuming to produce and edit content. Some small PHP scripts remained, like the D++ download counter. This was a clunky configuration time for PageMac.

I transitioned PageMac to DokuWiki and converted my portfolio of project content from HTML into DokuWiki. I like the simplicity of using the file system as the database, since the content does not change very often and it makes backups simple. The interface for posting and editing content easy to use, it has a large library of plugins, and I was able to easily make a theme to match the PageMac style.

I applied a long needed software upgrade for DokuWiki, modified the layout, and added more content. DokuWiki continues to work well! :)

PageMac continues today as my personal website to document my engineering and computing projects of interest.