One of my goals over the holidays was to rework my personal website. I actually really liked the previous theme, but over the course of the last six months or so have received numerous emails from people that either a) didn’t like the black background or b) didn’t like the font usage and sizes (granted, I actually like really tiny fonts, which isn’t that great from a usability perspective).
I sat down in front of the TV tonight at around 9pm and decided to try and hack something out that would make it easier for that group of people, while also allowing me to make a few improvements with regards to navigation and site layout. A couple of key changes:
- I’ve increased the width of the main content from about 500 pixels to about 620 pixels, mainly so that I can start showcasing larger images from my portfolio
- I’ve added breadcrumb navigation for pages, as well as a sidebar navigation scheme
- I’ve put additional photography content on the main page, and got rid of the featured content gallery, mainly because it’s pretty heavy and it slows my site down considerably
- Most of the photos on the site now open in an overlay instead of going to Flickr
I still have to rebuild my photography section, and I’d like to add a full site-map (since I think it’s not clear how deep some of the areas go). But I wanted to open it up for some traffic and get a sense (via my stats) how people are navigating what I’ve currently done before making any additional changes.
Feel free to drop me a comment and let me know what you think. It’s still a work in progress, and I’ll shine it up a bit more tomorrow, but all in all not a bad effort for a few hours in front of the television, and a nice change from the darkness of the last theme.
I actually liked the previous theme better but perhaps this one will grow on me. I have typically not liked your black background themes but the previous one was quite agreeable.
I find the new style to be a bit wide for my typical browser size on my laptop although probably fine on my iMac.
I shrunk the width slightly. I shouldn’t have run off the edge before, but it was pretty wide. Should be a bit smaller now.
I like this new scheme. I had a light-on-dark design myself years back, but got so many complaints about it that I’ve relied on black-on-white ever since. Give the people what they want.
Love the new look – it’s pretty slick.
I was wondering why it looked different. I think I like this one better.
I did come across some 404 in the portfolio part but at this time I cant remember what part…