I’m back from an unplugged Christmas and New Year, which was much needed after a ridiculous week of work leading up to Christmas Eve. I’ve hardly read any blogs and the number of emails I’ve answered could be counted on one hand. Great.
I’ve spend the last couple of days updating the work section of my website though, in preparation for the new year. It’s been ages since I added any new work and the amount I’ve got in there now required a rethink. It could still do with a bit of design TLC but I don’t think I’m going to have time for a few weeks. Anyway, I thought I’d take the opportunity to flex my brand new XSL muscles, especialy since I’ve got a little side-project on the subject coming up. I’ve been meaning to rewrite my whole site in PHP/MySQL and separating the content from the style (in-joke) with an XML layer (plus a little bit of custom caching) seemed like the best way.
My site is hosted by dc-hosting and provides IIS servers but with PHP/MySQL support built in. Ideal! It means that I can recode the front end with XSL and all I need to do when I move to PHP is write some simple XML generation scripts and I’m away.
I’ve got that big red and yellow XSLT 2nd edition book but the most useful resource for this little project has been the PDF version of Essential XML Quick Reference. A physical book is great but for reference the most useful thing is fast searching and nothing beats electronic data for that. And it’s free! Go get it. Now. Before they change their minds.
