3 page intro site…piece of cake, right?

So for this week, we were asked to design a 3 page intro site. No problemo…

Since I am in the process of updating my website from it’s current state to a newer, shinier state*, I figured why not get some credit and feedback from my class.

(*note: I think it is inevitable that while you are learning Web Design you will quite possibly re-design your own site a ka-billion times! that’s ok though, it’s good practice.)

My current site (my first site ever) was designed with the sole intention of giving people a place to see my work and thereby get  me a job!

are you feelin' the green, me neither.

This site was an ok beginning. It had a quick animated GIF intro and then a Lightbox feature that displayed my work in a fancypants, ooow-ahhh, kinda way. However after consistent feedback from friends and no job offers, I decided to give it another go.

The feedback that I got was that the intro was annoying, the navigation was a little awkward, and the logo was a little feminine for the image that I wanted to project. Duly noted.

So I re-designed the site with those considerations in mind. Also, as I mentioned earlier, as you learn new techniques it difficult not to just use them all at once, together, in the same monster of a site because you’re excited about what you’ve learned and you want to see if it will work. Restrain yourself.

new homepage, note the advice taken.

branding page

Lightbox image display gallery. Isn't that fancy?

The original site had the Lightbox gallery also, but there were other obvious differences. I decided to go for a more neutral look and feel. The original green was overpowering and not necessarily conveying the clean, fresh, image I want for my design image. The animated intro is a constant debate for me. On the one hand I know that most people don’t want to sit through even the shortest (30 secs) of intros, but on the other since I was looking for work, I wanted to show people that I could do that sort of thing if need be. In the end for my personal site, keeping people on the site long enough to see the work was more important to me than showing that I could make an intro.

On to the challenges. With a new look and layout, there comes new challenges. The navigation was another major point of contention. I wanted people to easily get to any category of work quickly without having to navigate through too many other pages. What’s that– the “two click rule?” (a user should not have to click more than twice to get to the desired content) Whatever it is, I was breaking it. So, I replaced the top bar navigation with a side bar, spry accordion navigation. I wanted the sub-categories for the pieces being show to slide down from the main category.

why is the navigation purple? i dunno.

It’s working ok for now, but I’m not sure that it is the most efficient way of doing this. Also, in case you haven’t noticed…I have…why is the navigation purple. One of the new issues that has arisen is that despite my setting the CSS for the accordion to another color, the active state and sometimes the link state while using Safari is purple. lame. I’m going to have to further investigate that one.

Then my third and final situation was uploading to the FTP. I’ve done this for my own site and a few times in previous classes, but it always trips me up. Feel free to check out an entire post on that topic.

All in all though, I am happy with my design revisions. Even though this site was only required to be three pages, with no real specified parameters, I chose to use my current personal site and invite comments. Go check it out, it’s up live now www.katemichelle.com