CXLLUM
Changelogs, DNS Disasters, and a Fingerprint Scanner I'm Saving for Later
Welcome back, nobody!
Tonight started with a simple idea and ended with me briefly taking down my own website.
The simple idea was a changelog page. I've been building this site for almost a month now and I wanted somewhere to document everything that's been added — styled like a git log output because of course it is. Fake commit hashes, version numbers, the works. It looks genuinely cool and I'm not even slightly sorry about how much time I spent on it.
The whole thing is database driven, so there's an admin form to add new entries with a neat little trick: it looks at the most recent version in the database and suggests the next one automatically. Start from v0.1 and it'll suggest v0.2 without you having to think about it. I then spent a happy twenty minutes backfilling the entire history of the site from "Welcome to my site" all the way up to v1.0.1 tonight. Turns out bulk SQL inserts are a lot faster than filling in a form ten times. Who knew.
I also added the current site version to the system stats widget on the homepage, so it now shows USER, VERSION, UPTIME and the fake CPU/RAM/VIBE/CAFFEINE bars. It updates automatically whenever I add a new changelog entry, which feels very professional for something that is mostly made up.
Then I tried to fix the longstanding issue of cxllum.com (without the www) throwing a database error. This is where things got spicy.
I found a "Forward Domain" option in Ionos that looked exactly like what I needed. I clicked it, set it to redirect to https://www.cxllum.com, hit save, and watched in real time as both versions of my site simultaneously stopped working. The www version. The non-www version. All of it. Just gone. Chrome suggested I might have meant http://gallup.com/ which was not helpful.
After a brief moment of what I can only describe as controlled panic, I managed to find the setting to reconnect the domain to the webspace and everything came back. The non-www redirect remains unsolved, but honestly? It's fine. Most people aren't typing URLs manually in 2026 anyway. I'm calling it a known issue and moving on with my dignity mostly intact.
On the bright side, I did nearly talk myself into implementing fingerprint authentication for the admin dashboard tonight. WebAuthn, biometric login, the whole thing. I have decided this is a project for a day when I haven't already nearly deleted my website.
Key Features:
- Changelog page built with git log styling, fake commit hashes and version numbers 📋
- Admin form to add changelog entries with auto-suggested version numbers ✨
- Bulk SQL insert used to backfill the full site history from v0.1 to v1.0 🗄️
- Current version added to the system stats widget on the homepage 🖥️
- Attempted non-www redirect, briefly took down the entire site, fixed it 😅
- Fingerprint authentication wisely postponed to another day 🫡