It’s been about 6 weeks since I said “I need to update my website and blog into something I love and am proud of.” It’s taking a lot longer than I thought, but I am also extremely pleased with what I’ve accomplished – and I’m almost done with the revamp!
Here’s what it has entailed so far:
- Gutting the existing Hybrid Core wordpress framwork that I use and just keeping the php portions.
- Implementing Bootstrap for the HTML/CSS.
- Actually writing all the php frags that make up a theme
- Writing all new Less for the theme.
- Round after round of visual design. Finally ended up on something I felt was what I was looking for…
- Writing up new Coffeescript components for the pieces of javascript I do use.
- Making designs that work and are effective for mobile responsive layouts. Bootstrap helps with that, but getting everything just right for a tablet or phone requires a lot of extensive nitpicking at details. Thankfully, Xcode lets me run the site through the iOS emulators so I can just view it all locally and not actually have to keep reloading on my iPhone, iPad, iPad mini.
Then came content… so much content rewriting. And blog planning – I’ve got nearly a dozen blog drafts started so that I remember them for later.
And one of the hardest parts, of course, will be the portfolio portion. So much that can’t be shown visually, but can only be explained. Which requires visitors to read… and visitors like to skim (or skip), not read. I hope to address this later in an expanded, continued blog post about UX portfolios.
But the thing that has made this so much easier is this:
That’s right. A treadmill desk. I took a treadmill I bought off some classified ad, disassembled the top portion (which you can see there on the right), and built a desk around it. The top is a 4′ piece of premade countertop from Lowes, an a bunch of 2×4′s. I had my good old Apple 23″ Cinema Display I hadn’t really been using, and I just plug the MacBook Air into it.
Believe it or not, it’s quite easy to work, type, design, code, or just read on it while getting a good workout.
Just about done with the building, and can get on with the writing.