I mentioned last week that I was updating my site and I launched the update over the weekend. I have focused my spare time on this the last few weeks since finishing the Darker Side of the Orchids project. Although I only recently relaunched the site back in October using an off the shelf theme, I couldn't find one that I really liked, either there were too many gimmicks such as full screen slide shows running behind my article text or too boring or too corporate looking, so I decided to design my own.
My main requirements were to add a space for me to showcase my personal projects and portfolio, as the previous theme didn't offer for this, as well as creating something a little more unique to me.
I also really wanted to make sure that I took a mobile first approach to the design. I had noticed an increase in visitors using mobile devices to my site in Google Analytics. We have made use of the Skeleton framework at Go Tripod for a couple of projects, including the next release of Stubmatic, and I through this would be a good side project for me to get up to speed.
In addition to this I also wanted to make the website behave like an app, if it is installed to the home screen of an iPad or iPhone. I am not sure how many people will want to do this (so this was probably a feature purely for my use). There were several technical challenges we had to overcome to do this.
If you are interested in the technical details then please subscribe to the Go Tripod blog where I will be blogging not only about some of our technical solutions used here, but also for the next release of Stubmatic.
I hope you like the new site. Now I can get on with my next project which involves lots of keys...