The New and Improved Site Launches!

Hello everyone and welcome to the new site!

It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally got the new version up. There are some major changes, both in design on front and in the guts of the site. I’m happy to say that I’ve gotten all the goals I wanted for this site accomplished so far. Thanks to much of my new development experience, I was able to include things I could never have even approached with my original site when I graduated in 2010.

Architecture Overhaul

The old site was built statically on plain ol’ fashioned HTML and CSS. Updating was a pain (which is probably why it never really happened). The new site is… well… still built on HTML and CSS, but I’ve brought some new guys into the party. Namely, PHP and WordPress. Over my last couple years working at my current job I’ve gotten to know these two pretty well, especially over the last few months where now I work with them on a daily basis. Therefore, it was a no brainer to build the new site utilizing the power of the WordPress admin. It’s afforded me new opportunities, including the brand new blog and easy content management and editing.

Updated Me, Updated Brand

Along with the new technical abilities, the site has also changed its design pretty significantly. I decided my logo needed an update to reflect who I am at this point. I also changed up some of my branding to correspond with new typefaces. League Gothic provides a nice, bold look that is great for my new logo and headings. But the real workhorse is Source Sans Pro. Later on when I do coding examples I plan to use its sibling, Source Code Pro. I’ve attempted to go cleaner this time around, and I hope it shows.

Responsive Design for All Sizes

Another feature I’m excited about is that the site is utilizing responsive design. While I didn’t do a mobile first approach with this (something which I’ll have to reserve for the next version of the site), the results are pretty good so far. I intend on doing more testing and bug fixing in the coming weeks to try to iron out some details and make the experience more enjoyable for everyone.

In the Future…

I’m not done with this site yet. One of the great things about the web is the ability to improve your product after release. Along with hammering out the details of the responsive portion, I plan to add in extra little features and details to give the site the feel I want it to have. A big one being a system for comments on posts that I’m comfortable with. Further, I intend on continuing to add projects and blog posts as I am able. It should be a lot easier now to do so, and I guess that means I don’t really have an excuse anymore.

Thanks for stopping by! Be sure to read up on new posts as they come up.