May 4, 2010
Yet, it took me forever to launch the redesign of my site. Ok, six months. I didn’t think of it as procrastination because I was constantly working on it. Little parts of it here and there, with the plan that it would all come together eventually.
A full redesign can be a lot of work for not much return. It can also confuse your regulars. If it ain’t broke….keep it. When you’re designing for yourself, you should treat it as client work. Give yourself time tables and specific guidelines. I looked into and learned from others processes.
My thoughts were: this would be a great time to learn wordpress, jQuery, and try some CSS3. My full-time job is in graphic design, so I had to fit this in when I could. Without knowing it, I set my goal way too high. To learn these tools and languages, I needed more time than I allotted.
I had done a few non-flash sites, and I saw more overall benefits in them. I fought on the side of Flash for a while, but it was time. Flash was dying and I decided to say goodbye.
I wireframed, sketched and planned up the wazoo. I eventually wrapped my head around wordpress loops and some basic php, and I was able to see their potential. Whoa. I kept thinking: my site doesn’t do exactly what I want it to do. It wasn’t quite ready. I underestimated the backend of what it actually took to do some of the things I wanted my site to do. I had been listening a lot of theory, without practicing it. I understand progressive enhancement, usability, accessability, color theory, copy writing…doing them is a different animal.
My hesitance held me back; leading me to wish I had launched four months ago. Like many things, it got built up inside to a high standard. Here it is now. I’m landing the plane on water, preparing for a bumpy ride. All metaphors aside, I did it. Yay.
This post’s soundtrack: Third Eye Blind [audio: http://www.theburningear.com/media/2009/09/Third-Eye-Blind-Water-Landing.mp3|titles=Water Landing|artists=Third Eye Blind]