website overhaul

My very first web presence was launched in 2000, initially as a subdirectory within the MAVERIX STUDIOS site, but I got my own domain & hosting in 2002, making this year the 20th anniversary of my very own website. Now, after thinking about it for ages, I’ve finally done a complete refurb. All pages on my entire site are now run from WordPress, rather than only this NEWS page, as was the case before. Initially, any updates to galleries or this NEWS page were painstakingly coded by hand in HTML. Consequently, the site didn’t update often, as such coding punishes my tiny mind. I discovered the ease of BLOGGER in 2003 and the frequency of posts went up to roughly one per week, and their focus broadened to general ramblings about this & that, and writing autobiographical stories. Then, in 2006 I moved to WORDPRESS, attracted to the expanded options of their open source system, allowing me to host ALL the files on my own server. But the galleries were rarely updated, as they were still made by hand..

website redo
website redo

For many years my website was a Frankensteined mish-mash of pages coded by hand (the galleries etc) with only this NEWS page being in PHP. I’d always intended to redo my entire site in PHP, but then we all raced to social media and the pre-Facebook world of forums & blogs was less frequented anyway. Upgrading this site was not such a priority when my web traffic was so low. Also, reality got in the way, in the form of a major medical emergency and rebuilding my life became the focus, rather than merely rebuilding my portfolio website.

However, the final prod towards redbuilding my entire site was eventually forced upon me. I’d been using a marvelously versatile WordPress theme for many years, SUFFUSION by Sayontan Sinha, but updates to that theme stopped in 2016, and I knew I’d have to leave my security blanket eventually, and find a new theme & plugins. Over the past few months I’ve finally been chipping away at making it happen.

Et voila!

Now that everything is accessible via WordPress’ drag & drop interface, hopefully I will update art & photo galleries more often. I’d already been scanning my old photographs and posting them on Instagram, but recently had some weirdness there when they locked me out of my account for a week with no explanation as to WHY.. meaning that now I want to expand the photo galleries on my own site too.

My next goal is to upgrade my comics site, and likewise move it to PHP, which might happen via a WORDPRESS multisite install (where several sites can be run via one admin interface) and I plan to learn more about that next. A longtime personal (and lefty art-therapy) project has been expanding Rocket Rabbit stories into a book. It’s another thing I chip away on in my spare time, and I’d like to eventually make my comics website a place where I could post new pages on a regular basis.

So stay tuned!

10 thoughts on “website overhaul”

  1. James, given i did 2 yrs of computer science and am now useless at most tech things i am very impressed, your logic brain is getting lots of use. Take care

    Reply
    • Lisa!
      even before BRAIN DAMAGE my grey cells were never much good at science & mathematics.. so I’m utterly hopeless these days. Luckily there are some interfaces (like WordPress) that make coding websites intuitive for numbskulls like me.

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