New look, new sections

Posted on July 25, 2004

I’ve been thinking about what to do with this site for a while. Not just the weblog but the whole of nunonunes.org.

My main concern was about the content and the type of things I will want to put up in here. Then I thought about integration of all the sections and finally a little about the design.
Now I’m not in the least an artist and I am really bad at design. But I didn’t like it the way it was before so I had to do something.

As for the content I’ve decided that for now I’ll want to have a weblog, a photolog separated from the weblog, a photo gallery and, maybe most important, the rest of the site is going to be one big wiki.

So I had to start somewhere and I’ve already covered the weblog and photolog. I’m using Movabletype 2.64 for both of them and I don’t anticipate a move to version 3 anytime soon, but that may change as new plugins start to appear for that version.

Overall the HTML generation is quite acceptable to me, to the point where I can view the whole site perfectly well without any CSS whatsoever. This was my first goal and I think I’ve achieved it by now.

Then I just added some CSS on top of it to make the design part. It isn’t exactly a piece of art, but I don’t think it sucks heavily either.
I decided to make it viewable in 12’ screens without side-scrolling so it is just a little over 800 pixels wide.
I’m not exactly an expert on CSS and there are probably a few major problems with the site right now. In fact I launched this new look without even trying it out on an Internet Exploder but I do have the HTML pinned down (for the most part) so I’m not overly concerned about the rest. I’ll just have to find me a good designer to tweak the CSS for me or maybe create a whole new look and apply that over the existing HTML, no sweat.

The photolog is a first experience as I like to sometimes post pictures just out of the blue and I don’t think it is a good idea to put that kind of content on the weblog. It already has a few pictures which I used mainly to test out the way the site would handle like but I expect to have more content as time progresses and especially I hope to pin down the sections. As of right now all the existing sections are there only for the tests I made and I’ll have to see how the content evolves in order to figure out what sections make the most sense.

Now overall there is one item which really baffles me and that is typing. Not typing entries, mind you, but the art of choosing the right type-face for each portion of the site.
I am fully aware that the right type at the right place makes all the difference in the world, but I am utterly ignorant as to type choices so I’ll have to play around a bit more until I find something I can really enjoy.

Right now I just wanted to put something up and use it for a bit to see how I feel about it and we’ll see how it goes.

As for the missing sections of the site, well, I’m still not sure what I’ll use for the photo gallery section, I’ve discussed it here somewhat in the past and there is a new possibility in the horizon -photobuilder- and as for the wiki I had my mind set on tikiwiki until a few days ago, even knowing it was clearly overkill and maybe a bit more work than it would be worth, but then Melo got me looking at kwiki again. When I last looked at it it was still only CGI::Kwiki and it was a rough sketch of what it is today, but now it looks just right for integration in my site and so, soooo flexible…

So expect the odd broken link in the immediate future and if someone out there has a windows machine and can test out the main sections of the site I’d love to hear from you. Really, I’ve come to the point where I don’t have a single windows machine available that easily.
I’ll iron out all the small problems I expect to appear and when that’s finished I’ll start taking care of the wiki section and I guess I’ll leave the photo gallery for later.
I could have waited a bit longer for the design to settle down and to integrate the wiki before putting this new version up but it will take a while for me to do that and I do think it’s best to put something up and iron it out later than it is to delay further.

On with the show, then…