Finally!

I’ve been working away at this far longer than I care to admit, but today is the official unveiling of a new look for my website. Technically speaking it’s still a work in progress (as is the portfolio section) but this is pretty much the full gusto of the new site.

There were no shortage of obstacles in the process, from bouts with perfectionism, limitations on my programming skills, to enduring on & off web server shutdowns these past few months (courtesy of hot-linkers jacking up my bandwidth) that sometimes I just wished the internet as we know it would just collapse as to free me from the project — even getting hit by a bus would be less stressful I sometimes thought.

(of course I exaggerate about the bus, but it was tough at times)

A major difference from the previous “version 3.0” site is that this time around I rebuilt it exclusively using WordPress as the CMS. Redesigning it in this way not only makes every page dynamic now, but also makes everything so much easier for me to maintain. Plus, it was extremely helpful getting my hands dirty once again with the backend of WordPress, expanding on my PHP knowledge and help me to brush up significantly on my “theme” making skills, leveraging the newer features of the software more effectively.

Highlights of the revamp include:

• cleaner Graphic User Interface
• simplified navigation & permalink structure
• threaded comments
• related posts
• dynamically updated headline JQuery slider (Matto should love that one!)
• bigger portfolio images
• widgetized sidebars
• better typographic presentation
• just a damn nicer-looking website in general!

Now with this behind me at last, I can begin to just concentrate on rolling out with the new publishing format I drafted a few months back. The goal with that is to really stick to a consistent writing schedule, implement more topical posts and spend my time on producing it all more efficiently.

So while it did take a while longer than I wanted to debut the new site, I think it’s been worth all the effort. I learned a lot in the process and I’m so much more confident building websites using the WordPress CMS exculsively, alomst to the point of being cult-like about it! In fact I already have some free themes in the works as spin-offs of this website, so stay tuned for that as things are really going to get fun!

Well, that’s the long and short of it all. Let me know what you think of the new space: likes, dislikes, oversights, suggestions, whatever… you know the drill here.

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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