So, my live redesign went down the pan… Now, it’s all gone stencilled!
Too long has my site sported my extremely minimalist interim design. Too long have I wriitten only half-finished posts and never got around to posting them! So, here’s my May 2006 Reboot effort, and a promise to write more… maybe.
I’ve had this new design in the works for quite a while, adding to it every now and then. I’m still not totally happy with it, but then, I never am!
So, here it is! You may well see little changes every now and then – the transition to the live server hasn’t been as smooth as expected. Anyway, enjoy! Constructive criticism welcomed.
You’ll also notice I’m in the process of rearranging some areas of the site. I made a few shifts after I installed the latest Textpattern release.
Early last year, I put up a very basic home page as minor content
additions that weren’t really part of the blog came about. Having installed Textpattern afresh, much of the site is now run by it, which has given me a chance to do something with the home page.
My hard-coded tweaks to Textpattern got scrapped with the fresh install in favour of installing or writing a few plugins (good plan Pennell!). I’m still working on some of the plugins (making sure they’re fairly solid), but will try to make more of them available very soon in the new lab section.
9 Responses to “Rebooted: Version 2.0”
nice look. could do with a concrete type feel in the whitespace on the right-hand side, perhaps?
OK, it looks nice, but what about accessibility? With CSS on/images off the entire navigation disappears!
Love it, love the artwork! I agree with the earlier comments about the navigation though, as a habitual no-images surfer I was temporarily confused!
Thanks for the comments guys.
Patrick: I originally planned to incorporate something bold and interesting to fill in some whitespace, but haven’t had the time leading into the reboot.
Tommy and Lorna: Good point about the navigation. I started out with text links like the home page but wanted to compress the navigation on other pages. Gonna have to rethink that one.
Update: I’ve changed the navigation so that it’s more like the home page navigation. It doesn’t rely on images anymore, so it should be more accessible. I think the sideways text in the images made navigation more difficult anyway.
Besides, I can continue the decorative stencil theme down the right hand side. I feel a digital collage coming on.
How did you get away without using Purple? Plus that image looks scary, are you now one “mean spray-gangsta guy!.
I think I skirted around the purple issue quite well by telling Jo I would use it on my next side project.
As for the graffiti, it’s from a wall somewhere in Salford. It’s just a coincidence that it looks like me.
So, the face just happens to look like you, and has “DOTJAY” written underneath? What a lucky coincidence for you! 😛
As for the purple issue, don’t worry, Robert, I’m just biding my time until I can hijack the site and go crazy…
Plus, I may have my own little web project to purplerise over the next coming months…;)
Love the Bansy-esque stencil graffiti in the masthead Jon. Nice work batman. Makes me think of chainlink fences over concrete which is a tile background I have someplace.