A New Year

It's a new year for WSBF and the engineering department has been hard at work.  Over the summer, Computer Engineer David Cohen and I decided to completely redo the website, get rid of Drupal, and replace our haphazard database.  We also want to change our server from a Windows server to a Linux server, and after evaluating moving our Drupal site over, we decided to start fresh.  Our old database had become completely disorganized after years of adding on to it and various hacks and fixes to try to make it work with new systems.  With help from Clemson Ph.D. student in computer science, Yates Montieth, we managed to design an all new MySQL database in third normal form for the website and port over all the useful information from the old database.  After that we've been working on porting over and rewriting various systems we need for the station.  So far I've completely rewritten our CD review system; Music Director tools for moving rotation, editing reviews, and printing CD labels; and I've ported over all the music importing tools.  There's still a long list of things that need to be done, but for the station to function, these tools had to be completed first.  Through the process I've learned a lot about database design and normalization.  I've learned a great deal about MySQL, PHP, and JavaScript, which I'll continue to use to help David complete the website; however, my biggest responsibility in the process of rebuilding the website is done, which should leave me more time to complete the various hardware projects I've been working on.  There is no rest for an engineer.