New Site Redesign
Thats right a nice and new shiny site, complete with blog! So let’s break this blog thing into its new home and explain myself…
What’s changed in the redesign?
A welcome injection of colour and a much bolder approach then previously, to meet the trend for larger and high resolution displays. I tried to embrace flat design and let my work and the content provide the focus.
I have paired down my work from maybe a dozen pieces spread across three hardcoded categories: web, graphic, product, to just eight pieces of a mix my best stuff. This enables a much more focused sample of my professional work you can experience more simply. More casual pieces from my Tumblog have been brought under one domain. See other previous posts.
Typography is important particularly with the introduction of a blog to proceedings, a more casual sans-serif font - a mix of Geneva and Tahoma - has been chosen along with a strict vertical rhythm to make the site more comfortable to read on any screen.
I kept the left nav, right content arrangement of previous layouts, I felt my mix of work - plus with the blog coming - articles, would keep the balance best and retain the navigation.
The site is now responsive and built with a mobile first principle, so users should only download enough to get the best experience and no more.
Why change to Kirby CMS?
I enjoy using WordPress, I’ve been through two site overhauls with it now since WordPress v2.7. It was time for a change. This site now runs on Kirby CMS, a ‘flat-file’ PHP based framework.
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Features: To be honest, my site only used the bare minimal of features that WordPress provides. It was over the top for my needs and the trend will remain so as WordPress transitions from a blogging platform to a full-blown CMS. With my Kirby setup now there are just my files, my templates and the content result.
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Speed: I spent a lot of time last year getting the site faster and faster both myself and with the use of caching. Speed is important and Kirby I hope is going to give me even more. It’s more light-weight and performance has been speedy so far, page loads of approximately 1 second.
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Security and Stability: Every time I manually had to update WP - no so much of an issue lately with automatic updates - there was always a knot in my stomach that I would get the dreaded white screen. By ridding myself of the DB and a single point of failure I don’t have that to worry about any more.
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Markdown: I am also enjoying experiencing writing in Markdown, it is very quick to familiarise with and begin writing very fast. I don’t feel compelled to get the (html) markup in order as I write. So far I am really enjoying writing in Markdown it’s much faster.
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Something New: Its a new way of working, and new files to get stuck into and optimise to the way I want to work and maintain this site.
It seems I am not the only one, I got a subtle sense perhaps from the rise of GitHub and Jekyll, more recently there have been a lot of blog posts proclaiming 2014 to be the year of the flat file CMS. I suddenly feel less of a maverick.
Whats ahead?
The site will remain a work in progress, it’s easy with a new design and platform to explore the limits straightaway - I tried hard to focus myself and launch with a minimal-ish viable product - I shall be tweaking elements in the background and adding further features for a while to come.
I shall be resuming my CodePen demos and writing some more posts. Famous last words from so many blogs.
Hope you enjoying reading.
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