Redesign, Finally!

The redesign of this site has been in the works forEVER! And when I say forever..I really mean about 6-8 months of putting it on the back burner until my schedule opened up enough for me to be able to sit down and really figure out what I wanted to do. The redesign of this site went through about 6-8 different visual looks until I finally settled on what I wanted…and it took that long for me to settle. It wasn’t until my last attempt that I realized what I wanted here (at least for now): simple. clean. light. minimal. easy.

I didn’t want to be overly heavy with graphics and icons – – I wanted to lighten things up a bit and really rely, mainly, on CSS to do its magic for me. I guess because I work so much with graphic compositions and layouts with my client work…I just felt the need to lighten things up here and go with a very minimalistic approach to my new layout and design.

Black and white really appeals to me….but I just can’t walk away from the PINK! I adore pink (sorry, Danalyn..I had to!) and I have had pink on the design of this site for as long as I can remember, in some way, shape or form. So I went with a Black, white and pink color scheme…with some grey accents thrown in for good measure.

I wanted to get away from third-party applications, as much as humanly possible. I’ve gotten rid of the ads I had on this site and made the decision that I would not monetize this website anymore. I’m monetized elsewhere on the web…I don’t need it here. So, the text ads and Google Adsense that you used to see here are gone….vanished! Along with other third-party scripts and stuff that mucked up my site (not too mention load time). MyBlogLog, Twitter updates, etc, etc…gone. Somehow, just having them gone makes things feel a bit lighter around here! Not that I don’t have some.. I do: Feedburner feed count, my Flickr photo feed and my Google Reader feed.

The front page, as you see now, presents my most recent post…and underneath..some snippets from other posts I have made recently on this site. But, instead of showing full posts and giving you one HUGE page to scroll down, they are packaged in nice, tidy little snippets with dates, titles and comment counts in case you’d like to browse around.

My menu at the top of this site is still there – – but instead of presenting you with a list of page links… it’s kind of packaged in a short bio snippet that contains links to other areas of my site, where you can find more information.

The sidebar is short and sweet. Some little bio bits about myself, my Flickr feed 10 random photos from my Flickr account, my Sideblog with snippets of items that are significant…but not enough info to warrant a full post…and then the recent comments from YOU! The Recent Comments (‘Your Bits’) area shows your Gravatar (if you have one), which is linked to your web site (linkage!)… your name, which is linked to your comment on this site – – and a short snippet/teaser of what you said.

That’s it for the sidebar.

My footer contains three additional elements:

• My Shared items from my Google Reader….which contains some items from my Google Reader that I found so interesting that I just HAVE to share!
• My Blogroll – – this is a rotating blogroll that displays 10 random links from my blogroll…so the links are different each time you refresh – – but it does have a ‘read more’ link that takes you to my full links page, if you’re so inclined to see where I’m linking to.
• The last item in my footer is my sitewide tag cloud.

I restyled my comments that display your Gravatar – – and it also displays your comments in grey… and mine in pink. Makes it easier for me to scroll through and see where I’ve responded.

That’s pretty much it. It’s light, simple, clean and concise – – just the way I wanted it to be. This design is completely valid – both XHTML Strict and CSS. Well.. at least the front page is XHTML Strict in its validation … it will probably take me awhile to make sure all of the internal posts and pages are – – but the front page is at least a start. Prior to this, my previous design was XHTML 1.0 Transitional in its validation. Why the strict validation now? Meh – just because I can …. and it was just another additional challenge 🙂

Let’s see how long it takes for me to muck this up with all kinds of extra crap, eh? haha!

Oh – and I did get rid of the illustrated cartoon character of myself on this site… opting, instead, to put my own mugshot in the header – – figured it was about time to stop hiding behind a cartoon, hey?

So… is the pink and gray hard to read, a little? I’m a little worried about that part – – what about the rest? I think it looks nice… but, really, what do I know over here in my little hole in the wall office?? Thoughts?