under construction
I’m reminded of that dumbarse graphic that used to appear on about 50% of all websites before the late nineties before things started getting serious and professional and Real Money started to appear.
This site is under construction. Beware. Etc. Etc.
What actually happened is that I’ve been puttering around with small site redesign for a number of weeks now, not really making much progress, and I figured the best way to move forward was just to dump it online. Then I’d be forced to fix it.
This was enough of a snap decision that I’ve forgotten to take a screenshot of the old layout. Bother.
Anyway, at this point (and I’m shortly to retire for the evening) the home page layout needs some attention, the colours are shite everywhere… and don’t even talk about how the archive pages are looking at the moment.
All this will pass.
If you’ve jumped straight here from your feed reader (which is likely given how miserly I’ve become with the words I put in my feeds now), have a look at the homepage.
What I’d really appreciate from you, my dear readers, is some suggestions for colour schemes. I am no good with colours, as can probably be observed.
While you do that, I’ll slip out the door and re-immerse myself in my current read, Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver.
And tomorrow I’ll be back to clean up some of this mess here. Tradesman’s promise!
Heck
8 September 2006, 00:19 #
Some colour combinations I like very much (nicely designed sites as well):
http://jasonsantamaria.com
http://powazek.com
http://simplebits.com
http://principiagastronomica.com
http://photographi.ca
Sarah
8 September 2006, 03:22 #
I’m going through an in-love-with-grey phase at the moment, particularly grey with yellow, mint, aqua, candy pink. Or any neutrals with brights.
Patrick Quinn-Graham
8 September 2006, 05:16 #
Colours… just don’t do avocado & black, because I’ll feel totally ripped off :) (Just because said design is still in progress and not checked in to my svn repository is totally irrelevant)
Try http://www.defencemechanism.com/color/ – give it a base colour and it gives you hints, and then use http://www.snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html to make sure it’s got enough contrast, and you’re done!
Alan
8 September 2006, 06:48 #
Thanks for the suggestions. Although I’d really like to just steal Sarah’s site layout, I’ll have a look at Heck’s links (some of which I’ve seen before, I think) and try out Patrick’s handy colour choosing thing.
I also think that the fixed layout I have at the very least needs to be made wider, if not changed to be expandable. There’s a lot of tinkering coming.
Martha
8 September 2006, 08:28 #
Yeah, snaffle Sarah’s design.
Sarah
8 September 2006, 09:08 #
It’s not mine! It’s one of the templates available for wordpress.com blogs. It’s called Hemingway.
Alan
8 September 2006, 09:28 #
I saw that.
It actually makes me think: if Sarah, whose design eye is sharp and well-tempered, is happy using a template, then it should be ok for me (whose design eye is always three half-tones flat away from being in tune) to obtain some nifty template too. It certainly would save a lot of hassle. :-)
Heck
8 September 2006, 21:03 #
Didn’t realise until I just read Alan’s last comment (“if Sarah…”)
The Sarah ?
Aaaaaaaaaaah… !
Brian
11 September 2006, 21:41 #
I used to (still do) find the whole “under construction” thing rather annoying…
Basically because it’s a synonym for “we’ve registered the domain but we can’t be arsed actually creating any content”.
It also indicates the rather arrogant view that a web site can be considered to be fully constructed… Web sites are a little like newspapers… Now sooner is one edition out than it’s time to start working on the next one. My view is “under construction” is “situation normal”...
Claiming that a web site is “under construction” reveals alot about the web site owner’s understanding of the web and corresponding culture…
Alan
12 September 2006, 20:01 #
Jeez, I’d better get the place sorted out then.