My own personal solution to this for people who like the idea of keeping a private journal but aren’t used to handwriting long entries anymore. The solution is MAMP and WordPress. MAMP gives you an easy way to install MySQL APACHE and PHP for your Mac. Once you have MAMP installed you can then simply create a database for your wordpress and install wordpress. You get to blog and rant but still within the comfort and limits of your computer. Your website should only be accessible from your computer or your home network and with simple changes in the port settings you can require visitors (if you want visitors) to enter a password before being able to view any of part of your blog/site

I visited the Rizal Library today to simply kill time as it was one of the best places in campus to go to sleep. I searched their database just to see if they had any books on , Apache and web development and they did!

I wasn’t just able to barrow a book on PHP but I was also get Flash, XML and Ajax scripting books as well.

I started working with PHP when I was a sophomore in high school because I needed to find a way to make updating Farplaneabyss (my old Final Fantasy media site then) easier and faster. I’ve learned a couple more tricks over the past couple of years, more than your usual dynamic and simple PHP inclusion but it was never really enough. Though I’ve been comfortable using PHP, I never really learned formally which is why I never made my own scripts.

I’m so happy now that I have these books to read! I have a lot of free time this summer even with my design job but it helps a lot with the things I have to do.