2023 Year in Review

2023 Dec 31 - by Robert Giordano | Blog Index

What have I been doing for the past year? Well, its been an interesting journey with some ups and downs.

JAN
I became a Twitch Affiliate streamer on Jan 30, 2023. You can watch my live streams 3 times a week on Twitch.tv/rob215x. Why am I streaming on Twitch? That's a great question! Besides playing some amazing games like Elden Ring, and building my own IRL CAM that fits in a small shoulder bag and runs OBS, I wanted to connect with other streamers to see how Linkatopia could benefit the streaming community. I'll probably write a detailed post about that in the near future.

FEB
One of our biggest clients switched credit card processors and I had to become an certified developer for Shift4. This involved some thorough testing and it took most of my time during February and March to complete the process. The good news is I am now a certified Shift4 developer and that means I can integrate credit card payments directly into Linkatopia once I'm ready!

DON'T WORRY, Linkatopia will always remain free but I am adopting the same business model as Discord where you will be able to purchase a-la-cart upgrades to your account as you need them.


MAY
We implemented the Shift4 payment system to our existing clients with shopping carts and I built a couple of new modules for my system to track suspicious credit card activity. This just adds another layer of protection to a system that's already fairly secure.

JUL
I created a detailed page about our new shopping cart here. Again, the shopping cart is important because it lets our clients do hundreds on online sales every day, but it will also become part of Linkatopia!

One thing to note about that page I linked is- it should print nicely. Lately I've seen so many websites that just do not print well. You try to print a page and it comes out all weird. Sometimes it uses extra pieces of paper while parts of the page are missing! Why are so few sites using a printer stylesheet in 2023?

SEP
Our own website, Design215.com is always the last to get updated and it had been neglected for the past few years. It was still fully functional but I spent most of the month updating a bunch of the HTML5, JS, and backend code. I added some new security features and a Content Security Policy. All of these things will be applied to our client sites and Linkatopia.

As always, I'm looking ahead to new features and options I can add to Linkatopia as another year rolls along...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Robert Giordano