Well, after many months, the new website is complete enough to fire it up online, and I crave your indulgence and feedback.
What started, I believed, as a relatively elementary process, turned out to be way above my comfort zone and pay grade, as I had chosen to develop it in a language and platform of which I had no prior knowledge or experience.
After weeks of getting nowhere fast, common sense should have told me to hand the whole thing over to a professional. In fact, not once but three times, during the design and development process, I metaphorically screwed up the paper and started again. However, due to sheer pride and stubborness, I refused to concede.
Once I had learned my way forward, step by step, and reached the point where I committed to my design path, it really became intensive. Certainly for the last three or four weeks, getting it all nailed together and functional, and integrating much of the content, has been a dawn till dusk (and beyond) job, 7 days a week. Indeed, achieving the final hurdle of getting it all up from my local development platform to the online host, tested my resilience until gone 2:00am last night. Yes, all you wordpress and php developers out there can have a good laugh!
This is still a work-in-progress, and there will be a continuing evolution of the design, the user interface, the functionality and the fixing of quirks, bugs and errors. However, just for the moment I will languish in the satisfaction that I have managed to get this online at all, and simply continue with loading in the rest of the content. – At the time of writing this, there is no content in the Architectural, Product or Action categories.
If you have the time to navigate your way around the site, I would be really grateful for any critical feedback (you can test the commenting areas as well): things you don’t find quite intuitive in navigating around, things that don’t appear to function as you were expecting, or even your thoughts on the aesthetics of the site. I may have already found some of them, but please don’t let that hold you back.
Your feedback is particularly important, as the redevelopment of this site is the precursor to my forthcoming exhibition and launching a push for more commercial work.
I am putting this out there a little prematurely in the hope that you who have supported me up till now will indulge me and forgive those sins which may become apparent as you plow through it. I will promote it with more fanfare when I am happy that it is finished, at least for the time being, and in time for the exhibition.
The new website looks fantastic and easy to navigate – look forward to spending more time looking at all the pictures .
Thank you Jane for your comment, and for proving that the comment module is working.