Squirrelinabox Network (http://www.squirrelinabox.com)

Major announcements for the network will be posted here, including new sites, featured posts, and development updates.

The Tech Behind it All

I’ve been contacted a few times by people wondering what technologies I use to make some of the sites found in the Squirrelinabox Network. I may choose to create a page dedicated to this information in the future, but for now I’ve decided to just create a post detailing some of the tech I use to create my sites.

Almost True News, Blade TV Series, Food TV and Me, Office Humor Blog, SIAB GEAR, How the Web Works, Squirrelinabox
All the sites listed above use the free blogging software Wordpress. I’m a huge fan of the software and would definitely recommend it to all people interested in creating a site online. It comes with many different templates to choose from, but I create my own from scratch for all my sites. I’ve done very little custom programming with the Wordpress sites, as most of the customization can be achieved through their vast plugin library. Wordpress uses php and MySql.

Wii Play, Squirrelinabox Poker, Watermark Tool
The three sites above are all built from scratch using ASP.Net. Squirrelinabox Poker is currently using .Net 1.1 while both Wii Play and Watermark Tool are using .Net 2.0. I’m currently using the free version of Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2005 for these sites along with a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 backend. I custom code and design these sites and absolutely love the technology behind them.

So how do I decide whether or not to use Wordpress or my own custom solution? Well, basically it all comes down to whether or not the site I create is mostly an information/blog/news site that requires little customization or if the site requires some more advanced features and is really something totally unique. Wordpress is great for many sites out there, but if I’m planning on some fairly robust new features, I prefer to build it from the ground up rather than forcing it into Wordpress.

Oh, and I use Adobe Photoshop for all my graphics. I’m still running off 7.0 I believe, so purchasing a newer version is definitely on my list of things to do this year.

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