One of my hobbies of the past few years was to customize small, 2-inch tall Stikfas figures. After putting in the work to create a custom I wanted a good place to showcase the final product along with my peers. Unfortunately, there really wasn't anything available. So, I created the PaintStik.com website.

This project contained a number of programming pieces. First, all of the information about each custom was saved in a MySQL database, allowing them to be sorted and displayed in a number of different ways. Since this was an image-based website I also learned how to use the GD image library in PHP to automatically resize photos that were uploaded. To get around a safe mode restriction I have the website create new folders using an FTP module built into PHP. Rankings and comments are allowed for each custom and are also saved in MySQL. To allow visitors to keep track of new entries I learned how to create RSS feeds to display the most recently uploaded customs automatically. There is also a simple email protocol used to notify "customizers" whenever one of their customs receives a comment. Finally, I put in a small JavaScript function to switch CSS designs using the "Style" drop-down menu at the top-right corner of the site.

PaintStik has gone over very well, and despite waning interest in the Stikfas brand, it has been used extensively by a wide range of very talented customizers. This website gave me the reason I needed to learn a great many aspects of the PHP and MySQL languages.