Web Design

If you're reading this then you may already be on my new Web site, but if you're not, please check it out.

http://people.emich.edu/cthuring

This is just a transitional page until the time when I decide to move to private hosting. Probably when I get closer to graduation. Since the site doesn't use a database, it will be extremely easy to move.

But on with the topic.

Now, this is the third or fourth time I've built a Web page. It wasn't easy this time either, but I feel like I'm getting a little more familiar with the pieces involved in putting something together. I could have made it easier had I not stretched my skills, but that would not have been any fun either.

Particular challenges I had for this site were: A consistent and attractive color theme, modern coding that would make extension and modification easy and logical, adherence to W3C standards, and finally a few bells that would help promote my skills and show of my talent.

Some of those bells have yet to be fully developed, as I didn't put in extra time to produce the graphics necessary for more appealing tabs, or rounded corners. However, I think that even without any graphics the site is quite nice, showing that a few colors can go a long way.

The site relies upon PHP to call in the header, footer, navigation bar, and sidebar. These are identical across all pages, based upon a template file. There are a few pieces of Javascript. One loads this blog into the page via a Feedburner.com service called BuzzBoost, as Blogger does not provide a means to embed into a page.
Another Javascript provides the neato-cool Lightbox effect on the gallery page. I may switch to a different gallery, though, because it is currently very hokey to add images to the gallery, requiring several lines of code.

Another important consideration was making sure that, if scripts were disabled, the site would still function. Currently it is a little crippled, but that will be solved when I set up a server, likely with a wordpress.org backend replacing my blogger.com blog.

Well, I think that's everything. It would have been much better, I think, to document the whole process. Some of my random notes are on Pownce, but making a blog post about the making of the site would have been more interesting than this simple debriefing.

Perhaps next time. I almost built the site in AJAX and there's so much more to learn. :)