Whatcha think? It’s not a 100% what I was expecting, and the journey here was insane, but it’ll do for now.
A couple details and a mild rant:
You’ll notice some dust in the corners and cracks in the walls. I’ve got the fiction section most of the way there. Expect that to get seriously awesome when I launch my serial novel at the end of February.
The music section needs a header graphic and is currently just old stuff, but I’m playing with my schedule and trying to figure out where I can fit music in with writing and money-work and friends and cooking and and and … whew.
The shop section is just a placeholder for future stuff. I’ll probably turn it off soon and restart it when needed.
I should probably redo my bio too. *makes note*
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Not to end on a downer, but there’s a few things I wanted to get off my chest about the redesign. I’ve been debating whether to share this, but I think I need to say a few things:
So, as a lot of you know, my day job is web design. It’s practically criminal that I didn’t just buckle down and redo the site myself, but I needed a lot done. The fiction section, journal and music section are essentially three blogs controlled by one interface and I’d been thinking the site needed an update for a year or so. The more I thought about how much work it all needed, the more I dragged my feet.
So I finally bit the bullet and started shopping for a web designer to do the update. I didn’t look very far, but went with a person a friend of mine recommended. I wasn’t blown away by this person’s stuff, but I convinced myself they might be able to stretch a bit. (Honestly, that should have been my first warning bell.)
Long story short, I think the designer was in the middle of some life problems and the work was obviously outside their ability.
What they delivered was a mess.
I empathize with their problems, but, hell, if I had done a job half as shitty as they did, I’d own it and offer a refund.
As it was, when I discussed the problems, they got defensive, doubled down, talking to me as if I didn’t understand web design, (which I’ve done as a living for over 18 years.)
Eventually, they grudgingly agreed to a partial refund, saying it was only because I was a “fellow writer.” (More likely, they didn’t want me bad-mouthing them to my writing friends.)
Anyway, I eventually did a quick redesign (you’re looking at it.) The backend is still wonky, but I’ve got it at least working.
So, here we are. I’m not going to call them out. Hopefully they learned something. I sure did.
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