Technical stuff about the site
My site is hosted primarily at A2 Hosting (read why I switched from my original host, Affordable Host) and uses PHP and MySQL. (Originaly my site was just HTML pages on my space at NETCOM, my ISP.) The pages directly related to Wright State are hosted at Wright State.
Although I worked in the computer field for many years, web design is more a hobby for me than a professional skill, especially as standards continue to evolve and my focus has shifted to other things. The original version of davidlauri.com was my first attempt to implement CSS and to try to meet XHTML standards. I've still cheated some, using some TABLEs, but as I've had time and interest I've worked on changing that. Overall I'm pleased with how the site's turned out.
I haven't used a template from any one particular site but did get ideas from many. My original menu were adapted from the one at www.waferbaby.com. The idea for the original layout came from Eric Meyer's complexspiral demo (meyerweb.com is a great resource for those learning CSS).
I learned a lot about CSS and web design in general at www.alistapart.com. They recommended the NYPL Style Guide, which I did find helpful. NYPL recommended the Complete CSS Guide, which is useful as reference but perhaps too detailed for beginners and at times seems like an ad for their premium tutorials (for which I opted not to pay).
The drills in the German section originally were written in ASP and hosted at Brinkster, a company offering free ASP hosting. However, they were really just too slow to load and run and so I've rewritten them in JavaScript and they are hosted with the rest of the site now. Currently I just have drills for the class I'm taking now, GER399 Business German, which uses the text Deutsch im Berufsalltag by Michael Hager. When I get a chance I'll do JavaScript versions of the other vocabulary lists, which came from the text for GER101/2/3 at WSU, Deutsch-Kommunikation und Kultur by Allen E. Hye and from the text for GER201/2/3 at WSU, Deutsch - Immer Besser by Heimy Taylor, Werner Haas and Elfe Vallaster-Dona.
The original background image was a clip from one of Georgia O'Keeffe's purple petunia paintings, although I don't remember which one. The current background image is just something I put together in Photoshop. (What happened to the pansies?)
At any rate, I welcome comments telling me what you like or dislike about my site, offering suggestions about how to do things better or recommending sites to look at.