New Website Launch

Well I decided that even though I'm not completely finished with it, I would just go ahead and launch my new site. What I currently have is great, but I'd still like to add some thing and modify many others. But it is a very clear improvement from my previous website. Anyways, I'd just like to take a second to recognize some resources I used and to thank them.

In my new site, I wanted to avoid having a simple gallery where everything was just a thumbnail that, when clicked, went to a different page to see a larger view. To get away from this, I incorporated Lokesh Dhakar's lightbox2 script. Although recently I started studying and learning JavaScript on my own, I was still nowhere near creating something this amazing. His lightbox2 script can be found at:

http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/

Here are some screen shots of the new site and one showing what the lightbox script does when a thumbnail is clicked:

I used and modified a template from http://www.freecsstemplates.org/ to create my site. Although I plan on modifying this much more heavily, it was the perfect basis for my new site. Thanks be to them for their lovely templates!

So anyways, like I've said, it is still very much a work-in-progress, but to be honest... my last portfolio really was not an accurate representation of my skills and I really needed something that stood out more. I designed this new one in the hopes that it would do me justice much better than my last few designs and I'm very happy with the results. Be on the lookout for frequent updates!

First Glimpse

Well, I've been working at a little less quick of a pace than I probably should be. The problem with redesigning your own website is that if you aren't getting things accomplished quick enough, the only person you're letting down is yourself. I decided to set some deadlines for myself with this site and I'm hoping to adhere to those deadlines fairly closely. I'm not going to announce the dates on here because, well... I'm not the best at keeping this thing updated, and although the site may be done, I may not update this blog for a few days or even weeks after the fact.

Anyway, here is a quick first glimpse into what the site will look like:

I will give more credit where credit is due later, but I'm borrowing and modifying a few snippets of code and some scripts from some free sources to really try to make this site more innovative than my previous work, and I'll document those more officially later.

Just a little random thought and kind of a side note; I accidentally started typing out the code for a link with my caps lock key on, and I remember in high school when I was taking my very first web design course, we were taught it was standard practice to capitalize pretty much every piece of code. I also remember my instructor introducing us to the concept of Cascading Style Sheets and nobody understood its use. Keep in mind, this was back in the dark ages of web design... everything was animated, pages were cluttered beyond belief, and having content meant that there were actually words on the page somewhere. *shudders*