“Like Gutting a Fish”

As some of you are aware, I am not overwhelmingly happy with my website right now. My website is, in a lot of ways, a reflection of who or what I am. It is a metaphor for my life. If I am unhappy with the content and presentation of my site, it is highly likely (and certainly has been in this case) that it is indicative of my self-image and self-worth.

This is not a complaint, however. This is, after all, a two way street: by cleaning and improving my site, I improve my personal self-worth. My previous design honestly could have lasted quite a while longer: it was not a bad design, not in the least. It felt stagnant to me, though.

I apparently gave the impression that I took the feedback on the redesign pretty hard, for which I apologize. While I was slightly frustrated that some of the feedback had not come sooner in development, I was glad to have the feedback at all. The relatively poor response I received about the new design was not devastating, merely a bit of a bummer that happened to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. I guess that’ll teach me to make major changes and call for feedback when I’m feeling fragile emotionally. ;)

But where does this leave the site? Am I still wanting to gut it and do something different with the space? Well, some ways yes, some ways no.

I’m currently looking into Gallery, which is exactly what the name suggests: a web-based gallery system for photography and art. I’m thinking of switching to that for the visual portion of the site (need to verify a few things first). It has a lot of features built-in that I’ve wanted to add, and is realistically a better solution than my current MT workaround (not saying photoblogs are bad… this is just a more specialized solution).

My written “articles” will be made a static page, because it just doesn’t get updated often enough. This also frees the space to do more custom per-article solutions, depending on the needs of a given article (pagination, embedded images, et cetera).

And the journal portion of the site? It’s going to remain a journal, still running under Movable Type. I’m not entirely sure what the final design will be, but I doubt it will be the previous iteration, nor the current one.

As to when these changes will happen, it’s anyone’s guess. For now, I need to make the links page (if only for my own sanity… remembering my webcomics from memory is a pain), and change the table to a relative width. Wish me luck!

2 thoughts on ““Like Gutting a Fish”

  1. Sounds like a good plan to me. It’s clear that web sites, like life, are ever-changing. The key is, I think, finding a way to ride the wave.

    Good luck with the redesign.

  2. Well, I think it looks great. I run 1600×1200, though so, I automatically consider myself a minority when it comes to how webpages look on my monitor. I try to design my sites so that they work on 800 by 600 by default. ( I probably just shot myself in the foot by saying that, and I will run to my site at 800×600 to check, right after i’m doing commenting.:) I say, don’t scrap it, just identify what you don’t like about it. Try a color change :) That helps sometimes, in websites and in self-worth/reflection stuff. :)

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