What are these channels?

In case you are wondering, these are the 'Spiration Channels'. These 'channels' were first conceived in late 2001 when I was looking for a way to store ideas, notes and random stuff online. The intention was that I could encourage other people to comment on my own entries, or I could hide them from public view. I guess you could say this was an early(ish) form of blogging.

The channels in their original form used a flat-file storage mechanism, leveraging from the hierarchical structure of a computer file system. This was replaced in 2002 with a mysql database and then left unmaintained for several years. 2003 saw the addition of one or two additional features, but the site didn't see any real change until 2007 when the back-end was upgraded to php5/PDO and the front-end was switched to a more semantically-correct page structure with a pure CSS layout and style implementation. I am definitely not a markup/CSS expert, so there is probably a lot which can be improved on the front end of this platform.

Posts within the channels can support BBCode-style embedding, including support for code blocks, images, you-tube videos and other bits and pieces. The platform implementation is best suited to large, flat hierarchical tree structures of context.

Later improvements could include some SEO enhancements, extended use of named parameters in database calls, improved CSS and accessibility considerations, some level of packaging and simplified installation.