Daniel Marino

I Am Daniel Marino - Version Two

If you read one of my more recent posts, you’d know that one of my goals for this year was to not redesign my website. Well here we are two months into the year and I’ve already thrown that one out the window. Actually, I think I started working on the redesign the day after I wrote that.

Out with the Old

I was never fully satisfied with my previous version of this site. I always got good feedback on it. Even when I was showing my new design around to others, the majority of them would ask me what was wrong with my current one. I guess design-wise, I didn’t really have any major complaints with it. But under the hood, my site was lacking finesse. I think the biggest reason why the backend design was so ugly was for a couple of reasons:

1. It was my first experience using TextPattern
2. I kept making changes/updates to the layout and functionality of the website, leaving the backend a mess

I was reading TextPattern Solutions so I could learn how to effectively use TextPattern and in the course of my readings, I realized that my site could be so much better. Rather than just redesign the backend, I thought I would spruce up the design too.

In with the New

I drew a lot of inspiration from several websites out there, some may be obvious, and some may not — I’ll leave that for you to figure out. One thing I knew when redesigning is that I wanted this site to be a little more professional, yet still harness my personality. That’s a little hard for me to explain, so I won’t even try. This was important for me because lately I’ve been receiving a lot more freelance opportunities and traffic has been picking up around here.

Let’s Get Strict

This is my first time using XHTML 1.0 Strict and I’m happy to announce that every page on my site is valid. My previous version was XHTML 1.0 Transitional, but not every page was valid, which always bothered me.

It’s sIFR Time

I had thought about using sIFR on my previous version, but decided it wasn’t appropriate at the time. While comping up ideas for this new version, I really fell in love with the way the font Futura looked for some of my headings, so this time around sIFR was implemented.

Plugin to This

I’m using the same TextPattern plugins, but I’ve also added some new ones into the mix. I’m not going to get into what each one does, but here’s my current listing: ajw_if_comment_owner, hcg_templates, ied_hide_in_admin, rss_admin_db_manager, rss_auto_excerpt, rss_suparchive, zem_contact_lang, zem_contact_reborn. I will say that I love the zem_contact_reborn plugin as it saved me huge amounts of time from having to design and code the contact form from scratch.

Snippets

I decided to ditch the news section. I’m not cool enough to update all the things going on in my life. I didn’t like how it was stagnant so often. Instead, I’ve replaced it with a Snippets section, which is basically a listing of links to other cool things on the web.

Wrapping it All Up

That’s pretty much the gist of things around here. I can’t think of anything else worth mentioning related to Version two. I’d like to thank the Godbit community for helping out when I was up against a wall. I’d also like to thank my wife for putting up with me during another redesign.