Landing page

One of the first things I built was a landing page. Two years ago I started to learn web development and experimented with APIs. According to Wikipedia an application programming interface is a way for two or more computer programs or components to communicate with each other. In simple terms, when my site loads it asks another computer to provide an image.

So my goal was to develop a simple landing page that would:
- load a nice image each time
- use an API
- add a search bar

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has digitised its amazing collection and users can create their own collections. It is available under the name Rijksstudio. The procedure is easy, just register and you can start adding images of the artworks you like. There are many collections from individual users. In addition, Rijksstudio has its API service, which allows everybody to use the user-generated collections.

So I found a wonderful collection of historical artworks that focused on specific fabrics and fashion details that the old masters used. The result is a wonderful series of beautiful works.

In 2022, I studied the principles of PHP as a backend engine. With some help from online tools, I wrote a simple program that connected to this collection through the API and randomly selected one of the images.

On top of the image, I added a search bar leading to DuckDuckGo.
Finally, I added two links to my Github and LinkedIn profiles.

The landing page has been up for over two years. I am probably the only user, but it is a pleasure to be greeted by one of the Rijksmuseum masterpieces each day.

I still use the images for my new site, although I have filtered out the horizontal works as they do not fit well into a webpage. Secondly, I no longer use the API, but I have generated a list of the selected image URLs.

The code is available at my Github page

Technology

PHP, API