New site design, February 2015

Site redesign

It’s been a while since my last site redesign, and a course I’m taking through Ryerson spurred me to reimagine how this site should look, and what purpose it should serve.

I’ve now separated out my blog from updates to my portfolio, though new content will continue to show up on the home page and in RSS feeds, I think creates an easier division between my promotional: look where I was published! and more introspective: essays about what’s going on in the world and my life, and my photos of my totes adorbs cats.

The theme I’m using is called Tracks, by Compete Themes. I chose it because it’s bold, yet simple. Like most themes these days, it’s responsive, and looks good on tablets and smartphones in addition to desktops or laptops.

I like the way Tracks uses feature images, both on the index and archive-style pages the images are shown opposite the category, title, and excerpt. (Click around to see what I mean by this.) When you mouse over the images on the main index and archive-style pages you zoom in a bit. It’s boxy and a little gimmicky, but I like it. For single posts, the feature image heads the article before drawing the reader down to the category, title, and content. I can see this affecting the way I use images on this site going forward, and I apologize if things look a little weird in the archives now. I’m slowly working my way through and fixing this where I can.

On the top bar I’ve separated out my pages: About, Services, Testimonials, Contact, and added a link for the personal blog. On the right are social media links and the search box. On the lower bar I have my three portfolio categories: Articles, Poetry, and Reviews.

The original Tracks theme was a little dark for my purposes, so I created a child theme to lighten it, and play with some of the formatting choices Compete Themes had made. Tweaking the design will be an on-going process, but let me know what you think of it, and if you have any ideas of where I can improve.

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