I was inspired, sort of…

Anyone check out the design change over at css-tricks.com? Pretty damn nice, yes? I found its cleanness inspiring. So much so in fact, that I was an hour into changing my design here up quite a bit. If you wandered over here at the time, you might have noticed some of the changes. But while I was doing these changes, which involved a lot of deleting, I suddenly stopped to think things through. I then put most of what I was taking out, right back where I had them. Again, if you happened to be here while it was happening, you would have noticed that my slider was gone. Replaced by a simple header, a small lead-in on what the The Web Machine was all about, and another h2 tag that said some silly crap that I can’t remember. Why did I put it back though?

Because I am me, not him, or you, or anyone else

All of us have a specific style when doing our projects. I am no different. Once I took out the slider, and added the lead-in, I thought “You know, I could tone the navigation down, and do this or that with it. Then I’ll move that over there…” Once the hour or so mark came around, it hit me. “What the F@#$ am I doing?” I was starting to mimic things I saw on Chris Coyier’s site. While I did like the simplicity of what it was turning into, I realized that what I was doing was bothering me. Not because it didn’t look good, but because I was creating something that wasn’t me. I wouldn’t design any other blog like this one. I like what I have done here, and removing some of the things that are here, kind of goes against what I started this place out as.

The Web Machine started as a kind of documentary of the things I have learned and am learning. The slider is there because I learned how to write it myself, and shows the stage of me learning jQuery. I am damn proud of that thing. Sure it would clean things up a little with it gone, but for now it serves the purpose of reminding me of what I have accomplished in a short amount of time. So it stays. As well as some other stuff that I was deleting.

One thing I did do, was remove the retweet buttons off the home page, disable the retweet plugin, and put in Twitter’s new retweet button on the single post page. Repositioned it too, because I didn’t like it cutting into the content.

Long intro, but here is the point

Ok, so that was a lot of crap to get to my main point, but it was a back story of something else it made me think of. If this was not The Web Machine, would the slider stay? My answer: No. The real questions that you should all ask yourselves is: Am I putting this in here just because I can? Is this just to show some new trendy web 2 point whatever thing? Is it adding anything of value to the site?

I see a lot of people putting in some crazy ass piece of jQuery in because it looks cool, but not because it serves any purpose or adds to the functionality of the site they are creating. To me, Chris’s redesign is damn spot on with what a site should be. Almost everything has a point to it, it’s easy to read, and everything lends itself to what he is trying to accomplish. Which is to get the content to you. His whole point is the content.

Now, while I would love to restructure my site here to do the same thing, my intent and his are different. Therefore, some of the ridiculous stuff stays. One day I might change it up and do a house cleaning, but it isn’t now. Yes I want to get my content to you, and I think I am doing a decent job of that, but The Web Machine has other personal reasons for existing. By writing these articles for you, I end up learning a lot, too. When it becomes less about me, that is when I will change it up.

Don’t do it unless it adds something to the site

All of that just to get to that small point. You can curse me later, but think about the title of this article. Think about the real reasons why you are doing something. The hard part is being really honest. I know the feeling of “Damn, that is really bad ass, I totally want to put that right there,” even when there is no other point other than looking really freakin’ cool. Chances are, that if you are only putting it in for the “cool factor”, it probably shouldn’t be there. Whatever you are adding should serve a purpose, so think twice before adding that slider!

Tags: Web Development

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 at 4:14 am and is filed under Web Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.