Major site overhaul
Friday, April 4, 2008With several varying URLs and projects scattered across different sites, a major overhauling of my sites was long overdo. My blog, illustration portfolio, and neglected Machine Gum comics site needed, I felt, a more cohesive presence. So after months of wrestling with stylesheets and learning an entirely new CMS, I’m excited and relieved to finally launch this latest redesign. It’s not a major departure from the previous design; but I’ve managed to consolidate everything a little better with more uniform branding and navigation.
I’m not a professional web designer, but I am a fairly competent hobbyist I think. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t have been able to do this without the help of both CSSEdit and the Blueprint CSS framework, both of which help take most of the guesswork out of designing with stylesheets. Web standards geeks tempted to look under the hood will still find no-nos like empty divs, and a somewhat disorganized stylesheet, but whatever. I’m a cartoonist, not a bricklayer!
I’m crossing my fingers that those subscribed to my old RSS feed will seamlessly pick up this new one. The new feed contains blog entries as well as comics and my growing collection of warm-up drawings. Hopefully that’s not too much information overload. Should I have separate feeds for things like the comics section? Anyone even care?
And new to the site is, finally, a store page for my minicomics and original art.
Please click around and let me know if anything’s broken, or out of place. There are still a few details to take care of, but I finally think it’s ready to go live. After a few days of solid coding, and an unhealthy amount of both coffee and Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes, I’m ready for a nap.
Fran says:
Pretty!
James says:
Great work! And glad to see that Girls Are Weird is still here. I’ve probably been looking at web sites of yours for more than a decade now!
joshzam says:
Congratulations on the redesign and restructure. God, I find that whole procedure so stressful. It must feel great to have it all behind you.
With that said, I am missing some sort of robot on your site. Even a little one. The new design is very clean and orderly, but I’m not getting any of your personal vibe from it. I guess your drawings could provide that. Content is king, after all. (oh, and the old RSS feed seems to work just fine)
I love me some Cap’n Kitty swordplay, though
Eva says:
I just noticed the collective feed!
It kind of messes up my system: I don’t mind seeing comics, but I have separate categories in Google Reader for “friends” and “comics” so if there were separate feeds it would be ever so slightly more awesome.
But if I’m the only one who requests separate feeds, then don’t bother. I’ll probably survive the UNRULY CHAOS in my feed reader.
Eva says:
(I sound really annoying if you don’t know that I already said elsewhere that I liked the new design.
People of the ‘net: I am not annoying! Not for that reason, at least.)
Johnny says:
Thanks folks.
Josh, maybe I’ll try and squeeze a robot in there somewhere. I agree that the front page seems a little stark if the topmost blog post doesn’t have any images.
Eva, I’ll probably add separate RSS feeds. I was jut in a hurry to get this thing online.
Johnny says:
And James—more than a decade! And to think they still call this “new” media.
DH. says:
YES!!! Nice work, John! I couldn’t help myself in ye olde shoppe, so while I look forward to some stuff in my PO box, I’ll sate my eyes with your fancy new site. Congrats on the update!
Maria says:
I don’t mind the collective feeds. Then again, I have no categories for my feeds, I have like 3 subscriptions overall, so it doesn’t make that much difference. Actually, I like it. Forget about what Eva said, let’s go with the collective feeds all the way!!!
Eduardo Medeiros says:
awesome work johnny!!!
FN says:
Lookin good johnny!
what made you drop wordpress?
Nathan Harrison says:
Just a heads-up—the CMS link has an extra “t” in “http”.
Beth Budwig says:
Great-looking site! I won’t look at the source code or anything, but I was about to comment with what Nathan just said.
Johnny says:
Oops, thanks for the broken link tip!
Johnny says:
FN, I had read an article about Expression Engine, and it was as I was in the initial redesign stages. So it seemed like an opportune time to learn something new, and take advantage of things like multiple blogs, custom entry fields, and the built-in commerce features of EE.