After sitting on the benalman.com domain for what seemed like forever, I finally decided to do something with it. The old RJ3 Cowboy 4.0 website was great, but I just wanted a fresh start on a new server (that didn't have nearly ten years of accumulated files).
I took the portfolio / resume mini-website that I created last year, added in a Movable Type blog, and then created a custom photos index page using the Flickr API. After all that, I widened it by a few pixels and this is the result.
It's a work in progress, as I'd like to create some kind of homepage mashup of my latest news post, featured portfolio items, and some recently uploaded photos.. and I would also like to add a music section.. but at least I've laid the groundwork.
The portfolio page of this website was built in PHP, using XML and XSLT. The photo section was also built in PHP, and links directly to my Flickr account via the Phlickr wrapper to the Flickr Services API. The blog section of this website is powered by a customized Movable Type Open Source installation.
Semantic HTML and CSS keep the content well-organized and accessible, and the file sizes small. JavaScript (with help from JQuery) takes care of the details. RSS feeds and email subscriptions are powered by Yahoo Pipes and FeedBurner.
The photographs and text on this website by
"Cowboy" Ben Alman (excluding client work on the portfolio) are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.