Another year, another website re-vamp. Why the frequent changes? Well, anyone who works online knows that the next hot thing is what everyone wants, and any designer will tell you that being happy with your own work is something that's NEVER gonna happen.
However I wanted to do this upgrade for a few reasons:
Well, it stumbled out of the blocks, frankly. Joomla was updated early in the year to v1.6 (we'd been from 1.15 to 1.15.23 in the last couple years) and then Joomla dropped the ball for a few weeks when they realized they stil had some bigs to work out. Now the "point" releases of Joomla are supposed to come a bit more quickly, and with more stability. I've designed a few sites in the new iteration of Joomla, and I have to say (now that development is picking up again for extensions) that it's a BIG improvement on 1.5. Here's a quick list of the big plusses for 1.7:
• No Sections - just nested categories, which makes life WAY easier for sites to start with a simple organizational structure for articles.
• No Stories Folder - the main images folder is no longer the repository for squillions of files that belong to the CMS, which makes for much easier work using the Media Manager when you don't want users messing around with files they shouldn't.
• Permissions Galore - you can now set up groups of users, and give each group discrete permissions on just about every element of the site (both front and back-end) making it far easier to keep sensitive parts of the site protected (and especially useful for any sites charging for access).
• Fast and Faster - the architecture of 1.7 is much leaner than 1.5, so it makes working on a site much less of a chore.
• Modular Timing - modules can now be scheduled for publication (just like articles), which makes it much easier to schedule updates that involve changing functional elements of the site at precice intervals.
I could go on and on about the new Template styles, the improved editors, the way HTML5 and CSS3 work brilliantly...
...but that wouldn't leave me any time to discuss the other changes to the site.
Personally, I've wanted one for a while, but expenses and exploding monitors have kept it pretty far down my list. With the iPad2 it became even more of a must have, and I must say I'm fantasizing about updating clients' websites from an iPad while sitting in a hammock in my new backyard.
However I have gone ahead and got myself the SDK's for the iPhone and iPad, and I wanted to re-design my site so it works best on one of those devices, as well as making it more fun and easier to navigate for potential customers. Now visitors to the site can swipe their way down the main page with a gesture, as can anyone using that kind of technology on their PC. Everything is bolder, clearer, and a bit more fun to browse.
I had a wibya bar, which was neat, but which I also got tired of. I was promoting WIX for flash, and then realized no-one wants flash anymore. I had loads of listings for extensions and Mac apps that I was not keeping on top of, and my blog was an old discrace that hadn't been updated for ages.
I've dispensed with much of what made the old site clunky; simple links to social media, simpler menus, easier to browse, and not nearly so much text to trawl through. Now I'll be using the Facebook page as a mirror (of sorts) for the blog, and will finally be getting off my behind and making a bit more constructive use of Facebook and Linkedin. Sometimes it takes a while to learn you don't need all the bells and whistles on a website, even if you think they're cool.
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