Website Redesign – Feedback Wanted

I have nothing against Duplo, but I always disliked the Duplo-like quality that my website—in its various incarnations—has had. It has always been too bright and somehow too chunky looking. It looked childlike and unsophisticated. I didn’t want to go so far as to have a cold, passionless, Meccano-like style, but Lego at the very least. To that end, I’ve spent the last four hours and a good portion of yesterday doing an extensive site redesign. Below are some of the changes I’ve made with massive help from Brian.

- The most obvious change is the look of the website. It has been a constant battle to find a good balance between a scheme that is visually appealing, and one that doesn’t blind you when you try to read more than a few sentences. I’m not quite sure I’ve achieved perfection yet, but I am positive that it looks a thousand times better than it did before. A very subtle texture is now employed in the background of the site, the wrapper, and the posts themselves. I have also reduced the font-size of almost every type of text to again phase out that Duplo-like quality. The menus beneath my “Highlander Reviews” logo still lets me down in the “clunky factor”, but hey, I never said I was finished.

- Multiple items on the front page. Rather than my latest post dominating the homepage, it now displays my last three entries in excerpt form complete with their own image. I’ve also reduced the number of items present down the right-hand side of the site. I’m not a fan of busy looking websites; I dislike being presented with a million options and an over-complicated navigation method. However, sites undoubtedly look more professional when there is a good variety of items on display. To this end I’ve attempted to strike a balance. There are countless features I could have implemented. I could bomb visitors with features. However, I’ve stuck with what I feel is the right balance between accessibility and simplicity. There will definitely be more changes made in the features available around the site, but I’m pretty pleased with the look that I’ve achieved at the moment, so things are unlikely to change too drastically.

- A completely new indexing system. By far the thing I hated the most about my site in the past is the fact that I’ve had to manually build up my own lists. So for example, every time I made a new game review I had to edit my “Game Reviews” page and manually insert a link to the new item. I despised this not because of the effort it took, but because it felt so damn amateur. Well, if you have a look at my Game Reviews or Film Reviews index now, you’ll see that everything is beautifully arranged. It’s also done automatically now, so whenever I create a page for my latest game review, for example, it will automatically be added to the “Game Reviews” list. This is one of those things the average visitor to your site wouldn’t think twice about, and something that most would assume is a simple thing, but it’s what Brian and I have spent the majority of the last four hours working on. What an adventure. There were laughs, there were tears. There were website failures, lost passwords, broken plug-ins, massive misunderstandings of the fundamentals of how website actually work, and much more besides. All in the name of getting this place to archive things for me in an orderly and neat fashion. It was more than worth it. There are some indexes that have remained as they are such as the “Articles” pages. The reason for this is that it makes little sense to organise such items in alphabetical order when a list based on date of creation will do. There may be a more finessed way of displaying such lists, but it’s not of great concern to me at the moment.

There have been other changes behind the scenes, but because they’re behind the scenes it would be pointless to discuss them. All in all I feel that we’ve taken the site in a far more professional direction. I have a massive amount of work ahead of me since the systems the site now uses to organise different posts and pages depend on me assigning certain values to those posts and pages. Because these systems were only implemented today, I’ll have to go back through each and every last entry I’ve ever made and make it “compatible” with these systems so that the site knows what to do with them. I will also be looking into more ways to improve the overall design of the site.

There are times I ask myself why I invest so much money and time in this site, and indeed, any of my online ventures when I haven’t even put adverts anywhere to make even the most pointless of returns. I mean I could have spent my afternoon relaxing, and I think I’ll explode if I don’t play a game soon. It’s for the sake of creation I think. I’m pretty sure I just love having my own places to do what I want to do. Anyway, apologies for such a dry entry, I’ll have something more interesting next time. Since my site now demands a featured image for every post I make, and to make this a less ugly wall of text, here’s a picture of me and the kids.

Feedback on the new site design is more than welcome.