d-clef

Hey David,
 
Looks like a cool site! Would be interesting to see how far you can take that one tip though. I'm using my phone at the moment and the site doesn't really adjust to my limited screen size. There's a lot lately about responsive sites and a masonry grid. Maybe those could be integrated in the layout?
 
Good luck!

Yes, start with the php documentation and try out the apis, probably starting here.
 
For my current project I actually need dates earlier than 1000AD, which is the earliest date mysql allows in its DATE type. Using an integer value, in the format of YYYYMMDD - for example 20130609 representing today - allows accurate date comparison, and I can go back as far as I want to year zero.
 
For time values I store the time as seconds. I have two functions, secondsToTime and timeToSeconds, which are fairly simple to write.
 
The last place I worked (a very large financial software company) followed this practice in general, so that's where I picked it up. If you want to support more sophisticated functionality, it may be better to leverage an existing api, for example if you need to support timezones, daylight savings (which differs by country) - this gets painful very quickly!
 
However most of the time it's faster and simpler to store these two things as separate integers, and manage them on your own.

One other nicety you can do is to add a little javascript to the form itself, so that if any required fields are not filled out, you can catch this on the client side before sending incomplete data to the server. I do this in my current project, and if a field is not filled out, my js code intercepts the submit, turns the empty fields red, and waits for the user to try again.
 
You can see my code here:

https://www.openclassical.com/scripts/contact.js
 
The trySubmit() function is of interest.
 
I think this is especially important with regard to the email address field on most forms - I want to ensure they enter something, so I can hopefully respond to them.

4li4s - I haven't considered the footer for quite a while, and I do agree with your comments. I'll update that soon. Thanks!
 
Lev - thanks! By the way I just added lots of Schnittke works per your comment. Both he and Denisov were listed under 'minor composers', and Denisov remains there for now - it's just a logistical thing as I update each composer one at a time. You can find Schnittke's updated page here. Pretty awesome music.
 
extincted & Nillervision - thanks for the welcome and the kind words!

Welcome to the forum David. I must say i'm kinda impressed by the back end you've written. (Can't really see everything but the front end tells the back end )

Hello! I'm David, based in NYC here in the states. I thought I'd sign up to these forums as it seems like an ideal place for me to share my work, and learn from others doing similar things.
 
I'm a musician (classical pianist), and have learned quite a lot about computer science over the last years. My plan is coming together, and I have recently launched a website that aims to organize the great composers & their music, behind a simple interface. The goal of the site is to make classical music more accessible to the world at large.
 
The site may be found at www.openclassical.com if anyone would like to take a look.
 
I'm looking forward to exploring the forums here and interacting with you all.