My new website has launched!

Over the course of the past couple months, I’ve had the chance to re-design my website in between client projects and in the little free time I have these days (I am a part-time Barista at Starbucks and also do client work, as well as a new job I recently started at a really awesome Web startup, which I’ll mention later on, so keep your eyes open!).  But today is finally the day that I launch my brand new website, filled with all the goodies.  I really liked my last website, and while I felt it was creative and was fun to make, it was also my first step into the wonderful world of WordPress.  Because it was my first venture into this strange wilderness, it was a bit messy and un-organized (mainly on the coding side, but also visually).

With that being said, I decided after about 6 months of having that site online that I desperately needed to re-design, re-brand and re-organize.  I spent a good deal of time studying websites I loved and why I loved them.  I then went through about 10 ideas and 1000 sketches before even jumping into the project, which was extremely helpful in the long run.  I hadn’t handled it that way with the previous design, and it ended up pretty chaotic.

With this design I also opted to go almost 100% CMS.  This means just about every aspect of my site is controlled by a CMS (Content Management System), which I was able to create with the help of a great WordPress plugin called Flutter, which allows you to create custom write panels and makes just about anything possible as far as making a basic CMS in the WordPress environment.  Setting up the site and the system it runs on took a good amount of time, but later on when I’m in full swing, it will be saving me a lot of time, because I won’t have to hand-code anything at all.  If you’re new to the world of CMS, you know how much of a relief this can be to finally figure it out.

Shifting to the design of the site, my number one hope for this site was that it would be very clean, organized and content-driven.  I also wanted it to be a little darker, sleeker and have good use of subtle lighting effects, all of which I feel I’ve accomplished here.  I know I’ll eventually hate this design, because that’s just how it goes.  It has always been that way, whether I’m playing music or designing websites; the “old stuff” is never as good as the “new stuff”.  But for now, I’m very happy with how this design turned out.

Feel free to take a look around, drop a comment or Contact Me to say “hi”.  If you would like to follow what I’ve got going on, feel free to Subscribe to the RSS Feeds or Download My Dashboard Widget (Mac)!  Also, if you like any of my blog entries, please share them with the world by clicking the Share This Post banner at the bottom of each post!