blog

You may have noticed that my website has recently undergone a few cosmetic changes. Since my junior year of college, I have used a custom, self-crafted theme on my website that has worked rather well for my professional needs. However, as technology and life have progressed, I have learned more about web standards and entered a new phase in life, meriting an update to my personal website.

One of the first changes that I have made includ simplifying both the design and the code behind my theme. For example, instead of using small images in my navigation, I am now using simpler rectangular buttons. Also, where I had previously declared redundant style elements in my code I have now combined into a single definition. I hope that these tweaks lead to a simpler, cleaner site, even though some of these improvements will not be visible to anyone but myself.
In addition to styling, I have simplified the content somewhat as well. While I do still intend for this website to serve as a digital portfolio, I also want it to be more of a destination where people who have been involved in my life can visit to learn more about what I am up to, and what I have been thinking about recently. To these ends, I have combined several sections into a single page with links to a few of the various projects I have been involved with. This allows my visitors to quickly viewing my blog, my projects, or my contact information without wondering which category a specific project may be filed under.
Not all of this redesign was simplification, however. The homepage was a particular challenge, as I was unsure what I could display to not only welcome visitors but also create an interest in getting to know me more through my online presence. To this end, I created a design that I hope is clean and relatively simple, and for me it was very fun to come up with. I really enjoy working with JavaScript, and in creating a centerpiece for my homepage I decided to hand-code custom functions to allow my featured images to shift and grow, helping direct my visitors to the various features of my website. Practical application of code is what gets me excited about programming, so I had to keep reminding myself that I had other matters to attend to aside from programming!
Now I have arrived at what I hope is the worthwhile result of my redesign. I hope you like it! I have definitely enjoyed putting it together, and I hope that I can continue to improve upon it into the future. I apologize for my lack of new posts recently, but I hope now that the heavy lifting of my redesign is out of the way I can return to a more regular schedule of posts and content. The lack of posts is definitely not for want of subject matter, but rather for lack of time in a day. Thanks, as always, for reading, and see you again soon!