i've gotten this question a lot over the years, so here's the skinny on bitterepiphany.com - where it comes from, who runs it and how it's done.

The Where & Why:
if i had a motto, it would probably be "bitterepiphany.com: because i have a hard time finding shit" truth be told, this website was born of my intolerance to photobucket. while i'm all kinds of in favor of throwing things on tinypic for hosting, i am a sucker for a neatly organize gallery that i have complete and total control over and that's why i still do this.

The Host:
i've had the privilage of working with a wonderful hosting company over the years. dreamhost offers unlimited storage and bandwidth and all at a crazy low price. (in fact, my hosting package used to be called 'my crazy domain insane' or something of that ilk.) they offer a number of one click installs, including cart applications, and they couldn't make database setup, sub domains, e-mail and ftp accounts any easier. not to be a promo-whore, but if you want to start your own site and elect to use dreamhost as your host (which i strongly reccomend you do) i am always tremendously appreciative of a referal bonus - just input my username (bitterepiphany) into the referal field. (referal bonuses help cover the cost of my hosting each year and are the bread and butter of why i'm able to continue to bring the resource galleries to you.)

HTML & PHP Scripts:
most of the pages, including this one, are hand coded, straight html. CheekyImages and CheekyGallery are run on two different php scripts. The gallery is run on Gallery by menalto and can be found here. i've been using this software for - god, ever - and i love it. i have to admit, i've never had the stomach to reskin it to match though, so i can't attest to that process. who knows, though, maybe 2010 is my year. the resource gallery is run on Coppermine Photo Gallery's latest version. up to now, it had been running on something from probably 2004, so the upgrade has been greatly appreciated and i like it. at the moment, the blog is brought to you by blogger. i've been with blogger since 2000 and the mere prospect of leaving it is enough to throw me into a panic attack, but i've been considering manhandling wordpress. we'll see how it goes but, for now, blogger is the only blogging ap i would ever consider.

The Visuals:
layouts are always designed using adobe photoshop and illustrator and, while i handcode, i handcode in dreamweaver becuase i love the pretty colors it turns everything while it's working.