Moving Day
Friday, September 5, 2008
Well, it’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally made myself a new Web site. As cool as the old one was, I just needed something new. The page flipping was fun, but it was a pain to update anything, so I had basically stopped using it.
After a while, though, I really wanted to get an up-to-date portfolio online, so I started designing a new one. This time, I wanted to keep it simple—easy to navigate and easy to update. On the “easy to update” front, I decided to try a content management system—namely, ExpressionEngine. It’s a really nice system that allows me to update the content without having to mess with too much (if any) code, and it’s very flexible.
The Design
When I started designing the site, I was keeping to the same basic ideas of my original site (real-life objects, handwritten, etc.), but soon gave up this idea in favor of something much simpler. This time I kept the beach feeling of the old design, but with a more straightforward layout (pictured below).
I was really happy with this design… at first. After a while, though, I started to get bored with it, and I knew something was wrong if I was getting sick of the design before it was even done. So I went back to the drawing board one more time—with a sudden burst of inspiration from some very nice sites—and I came out with the design you see before you.
I’m pretty happy with it. It’s easier to use than the original site; it’s more colorful than version 2 of the redesign (above); and I think it communicates a lot about myself and my design philosophy. I’ll probably be making minor tweaks and changes over the next few weeks, but for the most part, I think it’s done!
The Blog
Another thing my old site was missing was a blog. I’ve never been a huge fan of writing, but I’m going to try to start keeping a blog, so that I can hopefully get better (and maybe even grow to like it!). It won’t be a boring “This is what I did today” kind of blog; I hope to write about design, life, music, books, art, photography… all kinds of stuff! So stay tuned for that. Writing might be infrequent at first, but hopefully I’ll get into the swing of it pretty fast.
Moving Right Along
Whelp, that’s all I have for now. I still have a few minor things to finish up with the site, but I’d love to hear from you. What do you think of the new site? Anything it’s missing? Anything that’s broken? Is there something you’d like to see me write about? Let me know in the comments.
Posted in: Sun Splash
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