More about this website
I’m sure the serious members of the “blog” community would scoff at my silly little web site that talks about itself. And I realize there is little value in it for anyone but the most regular of visitors here, but that also is the appeal of this kind of publication. The Internet lets me publish to any audience, regardless of size and/or commercial feasibility. There are some issues I wish to sound-off on here, but I will likely not address them until I feel the site is finished.
Though this is really the 4th or 5th distinct version of the site since 1997, when I created my first personal site on a University server (it’s since been removed but I wish I had archived it), this is the first one I would consider robust enough to label version 1.0. For the first time, I have a journal, resume, a decent portfolio, and some information about myself on a fairly complete site. It’s mostly valid XHTML/CSS and even has a nice content management system that permits me to add blog entries and portfolio items through a web-based system.
The content management system is my own design. It is a modified version of what I’ve been doing for clients for over a year now. I’m not really a programmer, thought I am getting a good handle on PHP, so I am certain it could be better. But that said, it is 100% mine. I wrote every line of code and every feature so that it would work the way I want on this web site. I was very tempted to try a tool like Moveable Type, which so many talented people are using to do amazing things, but I really wanted the control and pride of doing it myself. Furthermore the complexity and robustness of Moveable Type really turned me away; I would much rather start with very limited functionality and add features I need than be overwhelmed by things I don’t use.
The funny thing is I am primarily a designer. I have been an artist my entire life and earned a BFA in Visual Communications. I have since really added a lot of technical skills that allow me to do XTHML, CSS, PHP, ASP, SQL, JavaScript, etc. But more and more I find doing those things repetitive, time-consuming, and uninteresting. I am most happy when I am doing design, even after all of the technology I have learned.
Recently I began to do some identity design work on contract from an agency. It has been delightfully refreshing to do just design. No worries about how I would make my ideas work in HTML, no concerns about browsers and PHP errors. I just make beautiful designs and then move on to the next one.
That is what is funny to me about this web site. I have spent so much time creating clean code, semantically-correct structure, and custom functionality that to me the design got lost in the process. Certainly, it is useable and clean, but it lacks the visual look and feel to set it apart from the rest of the web. To me it looks like a database site.
So now I am going to focus completely on the visual design for awhile. I want to make the current content beautiful and then I am considering a second version of the site that uses a Flash interface to access the same content. Already the weblog and portfolio content is stored in a database and I think that if I move the static content as well, I can use the same data pulled into Macromedia Flash™ to present the same content in a different way. That’s really what the whole idea of separation of form and content is all about, right? I hope to detail my process here at a later date.