In 2009, I set out to create a full festival registration system for several not-for-profit organizations to use.

Specific needs had to be met:

• Users should be able to register for events.
• Users should be able to purchase merchandise.
• Users should be able to pay for those items using Paypal.
• The system should automatically confirm those purchases.
• The system should also have Point Of Sale (POS) functionality.
• The admins should also be able to mark attendees as arrived at the event.
• A reporting system should be implemented to export the data to excel.

The amount I absorbed about PHP and MySQL working on this project still amazes me. I was able to create fairly decent code as I had learned a very valuable phrase "Self Documenting Code". Since I had spent a lot of time downloading and working with other individuals scripts with vBulletin, I had seen the full range of properly documented code, and horribly written code, that led me to the best practices.

When I look back over the database that I had created which contained over a dozen tables. I'm pleased to note that without any formal training I created a database that only violated the normalization rules on 1 column of 1 table.