dianaschnuth

I was never very good at working alone without peer feedback. So, I present for your commenting pleasure, the redesign work-in-progress. It still needs lots of detail work, but this is the general layout I’m thinking of starting with. I know I’m violating some cardinal rule of a website redesign by letting you see it way, waaaay before it’s ready for prime-time, but I’d like some comments. And, hell, it’s not like I have a really huge reader base, anyway. We’re all friends here.

FYI, this is a jpeg of a Photoshop comp, originally 1024px wide. The main content area is arranged so that users with 800×600 resolution can still see the entirety of the content. I’m planning to go whole-hog CSS this time, so the partially-opaque backgrounds will actually be DIVs with an opacity setting, not some trickery of background images. The flower background (and likely the color scheme and masthead) will change as the mood strikes me, although whatever image is there will remain fixed as the page scrolls. I’m defenestrating the iFrames. (Look it up.)

I’m not positive I’ll be keeping the TagBoard, as I’m hoping to upgrade web hosting and move to some sort of publishing software that allows comments. However, if I do keep it, you’ll all be glad to know that I’m working on upgrading to TagBoard Advanced. I doubt it’ll be around for the new design, though.

Comments from the peanut gallery are welcome and appreciated.

Yep, I think I’m ready to embark on my website redesign. Maybe if I had a real website with real content, I could get recognized in the “blogging community”… or some shit like that. I mean, shit, look at Dooce. She writes about her new baby, and breastfeeding, and getting fired from her job because of her website, and wrapping pasta around her dog’s snout because it’s funny. We’re both intelligent ex-Mormon women with a good sense of humor and a decent amount of web design skill, IMO. If I spent some quality time on my new site, got it to look all spiffy, maybe spent another few minutes actually composing blog articles rather than just being satisfied with my stream-of-consciousness posts?maybe then I could get some new readership. Or at least feel better about myself.

Next weekend: Mom’s visit and our trip to Dayton. Visit Grandpa and Grandma Cook and Amy.
Weekend after: Michigan Ren Fest (maybe)
Labor Day weekend: Taste of Cleveland (maybe)
Following weekend: Saginaires / Northern Aurora alumni picnic & Black Swamp w/ Amy
Weekend after that: Gravity Games in Cleveland Saturday & parade on Sunday

Gotta staff the phones tomorrow. Blech. I don’t mind it so much, except that I have some stuff from last week to wrap up, and new stuff to learn for this week, and it’s just about impossible while answering phone calls all day.

So, my computer is happy once more, and I have completed my tour of neat websites.

As with many things, sometimes I just like a website’s design without really thinking of specifically why I like said design. So, to make myself pay attention, I made a list of likes and dislikes as I websurfed the elite list, so I can integrate some specific ideas into my redesign.

My likes (and I apologize for not writing in layman’s terms):
+ a:hover / mouseOver background change on links
+ neat “ ‘s in blockquote backgrounds
+ little “about” blurbs in the sidebar
+ photographic mastheads with logomarks
+ cute little icons in front of post titles
+ kitsch. 50’s pics. retro fonts.
+ having the latest blog entry right up front
+ the ‘currently hearing‘ plugin
+ white (negative) space and an obvious focal point
+ partially opaque backgrounds for text
+ 5px borders on photos
+ logos with truncated letters (i.e. with the bottoms cut off)
+ simple, understated color palettes

My dislikes (or, things that seem chichéd or annoying):
+ centered layouts with patterned backgrounds on the sides
+ cute little icons in front of post titles
+ folder tabs
+ distressed-style graphics
+ overly large header graphics
+ cluttered teeny type
+ boxes with 45° cut-out corners

These are not, obviously, comprehensive lists of everything I like about every cool website, and I’m sure my likes and dislikes will change with time. They always do. After all, I once practically wet myself seeing this on an Apple Cinema Display, and now I just yawn and wonder if he’ll ever update his style.

On a similar note, I had an interesting conversation with one of my co-workers today. My partner in the duty rotation had mentioned that he’d been to college, so I asked what his degree was in. This opened up a floodgate of information—for which I was thankful, because it made me feel a little less… well, like a professional failure, to be blunt. Anyway, this guy graduated business college with an MIS degree, had a couple potentially super-cool second interviews, instead got a shitty job in his field away from home, quit and came back to NW Ohio. He ended up getting a temp gig at Sky to pay the bills (sounding familiar?), and accepted a permanent job when it was offered him, despite the fact that he would still be working outside of his field. Now he’s biding his time at Sky until he gets married in a month, and until his almost-wife gets her Master’s. Then he says he’s planning to go back to school (if it’ll help) and hopefully start a business with one particular friend/colleague of his.

He also shared with me that, after almost two years of not using his degree, he’s experiencing some… how did he put it? “Confidence issues.” I can completely relate to that. That’s actually one of the reasons I want to go in with Aaron sometime soon and get a video capture card for his computer—so I can edit video again. I’ve pretty much given up on catching up to the Flash wave. Director was fun to know, but no one uses it anymore. I can still design, though, and I hope I can still edit. I want to practice, and find out.

I shared with my co-worker that the main reason I’m not out job-hunting right now is that I’m waiting to become vested with my ESOP and Profit-Sharing conributions. My two-year anniversary is coming up in October, and then I’ll be 20% vested, I think. I’m not fully vested until I’ve been with the company for five years. But, considering how much Sky dumped into my 401(k) last quarter that isn’t really mine yet, I’ve got a pretty good incentive to stay on for another three years and some-odd months.

I just hope I can stay professionally competitive until then…

OK, I’m completely serious about this, so don’t post something silly without posting something serious, too.

I’ve been going through this list of well-designed websites, deciding what I admire and what I feel to be cliché. (I must have some amount of good taste, since I already frequent over half a dozen of the sites.) Anyway, one of the things I’d like to incorporate into my redesign (whenever it happens) is an About Me blurb. Not necessarily the full-page kind, as I’ve tried that multiple times and it just don’t work. More of something concise and amusing, like:

Diana Schnuth is a web designer and photographer in Toledo OH, making her actual living in the world of finance.

So, my homework assignment to you is to write one or two brief sentences about me that would explain who I am, and what I’m about, to any complete strangers who might confusedly stumble upon my site.

May the power of The Pink Pig be with you! Now go!

I’m contemplating embarking on a major website redesign. Not just a “the.details” redesign—a revamping of all the Diana Network of websites. I’m contemplating actually paying for my web hosting, and getting a decent amount of storage space. Perhaps an ASP-enabled server (so I can at least put pre-made scripts on it, even if I can’t make myself learn ASP alone). Hopefully at least PHP and SQL and Perl. Perhaps even abandoning LiveJournal altogether and trying out one of these other packages like Movable Type or WordPress or Textpattern.

Thing is, now that I give the idea some serious thought, I’m not sure how much control I would have over my design and coding if I use blogging software. My goal is to have a more dynamic page with more flexible design elements—”skinnable” is close to what I’m thinking, although I’m not sure if I could think of more than one or two site designs at once. But, anyway, having started as a hard-coder of HTML, it’s hard to give away all control of my coding, CSS or HTML or javascript or what-have-you. Even in Dreamweaver, I have to go in and fix code sometimes to get it the way I want.

And then there’s the Trendy Factor™. I don’t want my site to look exactly like everyone else’s site, spiffy and acclaimed though they may be. Unfortunately, however, my iFrames aren’t very searchable or trackable or navigable, though I once thought they were the proverbial shiznit. I want a clean, easy-to-update site with highly customizable design elements. I don’t necessarily want bleeding-edge web tech, nor do I want a rubber-stamp MT page with dashed lines around the blockquotes and a pretty patterned background behind my main content panel. I want a classic yet fun and moderately untraditional page that looks like I designed it.

When do I find my style? The one that I like as much as I like the styles of others? The closest I ever got was the Saginaires Alumni page, and even that’s beginning to look stale to me. It’s like it’s almost done, but not quite out of the draft stage. It’s missing something vital, some important detail elements.

Now, before I get a rash of “shut up—you design great websites!” comments (which, admittedly, I wouldn’t mind reading for an ego boost), I’ll concede that I do have some good ideas every now and then. I just can’t seem to make them combine into a solid final cohesive product with which I can be satisfied.

Maybe I’ll design a spiffy-looking new website with more dynamic and engaging content. We’ll see.