What I really need is that “easy button” or maybe some pixie dust, but the world doesn’t work that way. So let’s start with where I am and what changes are already started.

The stamp collecting site was inspired by Jim’s Stamp Album, and originally contained stamps from Israel only. In the early days, the pages were maintained in HTML files and edited using Notepad++. As the site grew, I transferred my collection information from FoxPro files to a MySQL database, and used that database to create the sites pages. Later, I added the WordPress front end and the various hacks to their database to I could modify content via automated cron jobs. Of course, as the collection grew, and the web site got more sophisticated, and the database kept getting new fields and tables. Every time there was something added, the hacks into WP started getting dicier. So that’s the basis for the current re-design – keep the feedback that WP gave me, but manage it myself, and lose the complexity of keeping up with WP changes to their back end.

Now, in order for the change to a single-page application to happen, I’m going to have to tweak the site a lot to get the data re-normalized (I let things slide in that department), and keep updating the existing php as the database changes. So in addition to documenting the new stuff, I’ll maintain a thread that follows the existing changes as well.