Feeling Different

If you asked me about a year ago what my favorite blogs were, I would give you the same answers that most of you would give. Lately, and by that I mean about 6 months or so, maybe a little longer, I’ve been feeling like none of them are writing about anything that I need anymore. I’m not going to mention any names because I respect what they gave me. What do I mean by ‘need’ though? That feeling of “Holy CRAP that is awesome.” I don’t know if the caliber of writing has gone down on those blogs, or if I’ve just grown beyond what they are doing. Only one major blog has kept up with where I am at and what I want to see, and that is net.tutsplus.com. Everyone else seems to be posting the same fluff pieces about things plumbers can teach us. I want tutorials about some bad-ass CSS3 techniques that no one has thought of. Or the video tutorial series I’m watching on net.tuts about starting Ruby.

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Poorly titled article yesterday

Ok, I apologize for yesterday’s article title. That was all about me. What about YOU though? Are you thinking of redesigning your website? Let’s take a look at what you should be thinking about, where to start, and being serious about what you are about to do.

Don’t just jump in!

Your first impulse when you are about to update your site is to just dive head first into the project without a second thought. Maybe you saw a cool photo that you want to use, or were inspired by 50 sites that were in some other blog’s list article (like me!). Or maybe you had no thoughts, but just decided it was time to do something about your site. I can tell you from experience that just noodling around in Photoshop will bring only a bunch of crap. I’ve tried that approach, and it doesn’t work. Expecting something awesome to come about from just playing around isn’t going to happen. What should you do? Absolutely NOTHING at first concerning the actual design. Get a notebook, or open Evernote, or even Paprika (love that little app), and start making lists.

First things first, go to your current site and look at it. Don’t just be all “Ya it *#Y@ing sucks.” I mean really look at it. Try to remember why you did the things you did. Write a list of what isn’t working, and another of what is. Be honest, because you will only hurt your future brilliant piece of interweb awesomeness. Is the navigation a well organized one? Do you have random things you put in just to show that you can do it? A careful study of what you did, will help you avoid what you shouldn’t do again. I found tons of things on mine, and it was a bit depressing that some items were so ill thought out.

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Something new, something borrowed, something…gray

I’ve finally created my business cards. For real this time, not some home created garbage that I never liked anyway. What did I learn about myself through designing them? I freakin’ love the combination of orange and gray. This isn’t some new thing either, I thought long about this after I created the cards (which you can see below). I’ve always liked these two colors together. I used to shoot archery with my mom and step-dad a lot when I was young, and I remember loving this arrow set that had gray shafts with orange and white fletchings. It was that memory that made me look at some of my past designs. I never really noticed before, but apparently I reeeeeeeeally love gray and orange. Now I have these new cards, and my website doesn’t fit together with them…guess what that means?

The current one is probably about a year and a half old now, maybe a little more, and I want it to match my new business cards. I had to do some critiquing though of what I have now, and why I think it actually needs it. First thing, gray and orange stay. That was a given. I had to go deeper though. What did I want to do, what do I like about my current site, and what don’t I like. I also needed a starting point for the new design, and I found it. Do you ever get inspired from a list site that shows like 20+ other sites that are pure awesome? I did (which is funny because usually I hate list articles) and that is where the borrowed comes from, which you will see.

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Sooooo….what to talk about. Well, lets start with the WordPress 3.0. Its out, as you all know (unless you are living under a rock), and has a ton of great new features. One of which I can’t wait to see, is the new menu manager. I’d like to try everything really, but I’m scared as hell. I went to the WordPress forum and saw some really scary stuff. “Hey, why is my admin page all white?” or “Where did my blog go?” kind of thing. Most of the problems seem to come from plugin compatibility. That is where I’m nervous. I have some plugins that might not go well with 3.0, and I don’t want to lose them. If anyone has upgraded from 2.9.2, to 3, please take a look at my post about my plugins, and if you know of any that will not work, let me know. I would be most greatful.

Next up, some links. I don’t know why all of a sudden these are popping up now, but apparently people think that code snippet sites are the “bomb.” Why not use Evernote? Do you really have time to go to a site and just browse through snippets that people have come up with? I sure don’t. But if you are indeed one who does, here are two new ones: smipplr, and codesnipp.it. If you would be so kind and let me know if you find sites like these helpful, or if you use them? A small comment review on one would be helpful. I struggle to wrap my mind around the usefulness of these things. Its like they are trying to come up with a social network site for us devs/designers, but this is all they could come up with.

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