Reworking Andy's Personal Site
I've had my own personal website since 1995. At the moment it displays several levels of archaeology, and over the next few months I'm going to rework it. However, as personal sites go it's quite large, so I'm aiming to work at it a few pages at a time.
This means that I need to make a few decisions at the beginning and be pretty certain I've got them right. Since I don't think I have anything to be ashamed of, I'd like to share the thought processes with you. If you think I'm doing something wrong, drop me a line and I'll happily discuss it with you. If you like what you see, why not consider ijnx for your next web project?
The site concept is built around a home, or "landing" page, which feeds into four pages describing my main areas of interest. I like the overall feel and the pictures are actually precious to me so I'm going to keep them, and that means keeping the black background. I know that's no longer trendy, but it's a personal site and I like the metaphor of a book cover with pages inside.
And I'm going to leave the home page pretty much intact, too. I spent time trying to get away from "square" and if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
One thing I've seen many firms do when they want to re-vamp their site is to throw everything away. Unless it's broken or doesn't do what you want, I don't think that's a good idea. In this case, there's a given. I'm keeping the four photos. Two were gifts, one is quite famous and the last is of a very special moment that'll never happen again.
Keeping the photos means keeping the black backgrounds. Not perhaps the trendiest thing in the world these days, but it's a personal site and I'm entitled to the odd indulgence here and there. Besides, I still like the metaphor of a book cover that you open, with pages of content, which will be dark on light.
Some studies show that light on dark is pretty readable, too - there's one on Vincent Flanders' wonderful "Web Pages That Suck" (new window). But, I can improve the text contrast and label the photographs. I'll also take the curly text out replace it with a standard block of text links for things like "links" and "email", which aren't the same sort of thing as the "places" section with its photograph. Losing the fussy background and adding a 75% hrule to give the design closure results in what I personally think is a cleaner design. Fine. Now for the other top level pages.