E.Webscapes Design Studio

Within the next few hours, E.Webscapes will experience a complete and total rebirth. Yes, I’m going to gut this baby out, from head to toe – and rebuild and restructure absolutely everything. The redesign and restructuring has been going on behind the scenes for several weeks now – and it’s just about ready. I’m currently fine tuning .. the small bits and piecesthat are left and will be ready to launch it in a few hours.

Here’s a sneak preview of the new design that’s coming:

I’m pretty excited about it. Currently, the specs on this site? Well, in VERY beginning – back in 1999.. this site was build in … *gasp*… pure HTML. Worse than that – it was built in tables with a whole lot of inline styles and not a LICK of CSS.

My how things change. As it progressed – I migrated everything into WordPress completely. Only, my experience with WordPress, at the time, was minimal – - so I had two separate installations of WordPress. One to manage the main, front page and all of the static pages, and another installed in the /designblog directory to run this design blog. On TOP of that – I couldn’t find a decent solution in WordPress to power portfolio – so I built it using Movable Type – and modified the templates severely to create a photoblog set up to display the portfolio.

As my experience and knowledge with WordPress grew by leaps and bounds, (and as WordPress development grew along with me) I eventually dropped the second installation of WordPress that was in the /designblog folder – and migrated the design blog into my main install of WordPress – running the entire site with one install of WordPress. Well, except for my portfolio.

My portfolio has always been the bane of my existence. I’m never happy with it – the way it is laid out and displayed. But the Movable Type set up made it extremely easy for me to update and deal with. Being very busy with client projects – I ignored my portfolio completely (except to fill it up with new client examples). My portfolio became the 600lb Gorilla in my office. It was there… it was HUGE…it was unruly – and was ignoring it, while the whole time it was in my way, blocking my view and cluttering up my life! I just didn’t have time to deal with it – - nor the inclination. To this day, that portfolio of mine is STILL powered by Movable Type.

So, as it stands right this moment – this site is powered by one installation of WordPress and one installation of Movable Type. Workable, functional – but not exactly ideal.

My goal for this redesign was to pare the whole thing down and run the whole kit and kaboodle with merely one installation of WordPress. It really took a lot of doing to restructure it – but I knew that once I did? It was going to be SO easy to manage. So I’ve decided to finally take control of my website – optimized completely with the best content management system in the world today: WordPress. *hugs wordpress*

Over the next few hours, the change will be complete and I beg your patience while E.Webscapes undergoes some MUCH NEEDED growing pains!

UPDATE
Things went pretty smooth, what do ya know? Especially considering that I completely revamped the way things had been done around here. I’ve received several emails from client, collegues and friends on the redesign so far – and I appreciate the encouraging words I put a lot into the design work I do – so the kind words are surely ‘feel good’ moments for the day! I’m still tweaking this puppy, though – - but, I think the day I stop tweaking, it will be because I’m six feet under.

Have a great weekend everyone!