A New Look for New Plans

As of today, I've got a new look for the website. It's very much a work in progress.

As someone who loves exploring design tools and development platforms, my personal website is often the guinea pig for my experimentation. (Here I'd like to register my apologies to guinea pigs for the reference and mistreatment).

My previous site was built using Webflow, which is a fantastic no-code tool that gives development control to designers. As a former developer, this felt like cheating, and I never had the control I wanted over certain styles and blah blah blah, but it reduces much of the tedium of web development with far more customization control than sites like Squarespace or Wix. Honestly, I haven't been a front end developer for years, and I'm not really qualified to have that control any longer or to know how one might maximize such powers once acquired, so I shouldn't complain.

Nevertheless, there were aspects of Webflow I didn't love. Blogging is the most notable example. Webflow uses a powerful headless content management system that offers tons of variability, but the act of writing with it is painful. Wordpress and Medium both offer much more modern writing tools if you blog regularly. In Webflow's defense, its primary use cases have never been about blogging, and it's reasonable they wouldn't prioritize those features.

In any case, between the inadequate tools and the modern trend of "magazine" layouts, I found myself rarely posting to my "blog". The act itself began to feel like drafting corporate press releases. Each post was so prominently placed I felt it had to offer deep meaning or insight.  (Not claiming I achieved either, only that I felt the pressure to try). As a result, any "less important" ideas I wanted to share, or quotes from books I found particularly meaningful, were relegated to social media. But you can't control who sees your FB posts anymore. And Twitter's character limit hinders the kind of sharing I prefer.

So I wanted my website to be what it once was: a place to share my thoughts and ideas, both big and small, in whatever form they may take, and to reclaim my content from the social media world. To do this, I had to reduce obstacles to posting. That includes the tools used to write and the format of presentation.

I've rebuilt the site using the Ghost platform. I used a heavily modified version of a Ghost starter template, and, as a result, the code is a mess and I've got excess styling everywhere. Most of you won't notice or care, but it bugs me. If the site doesn't perform well on your device, let me know. I haven't thoroughly tested it. Once I've figured out the nuances of the platform, I'll rebuild from scratch. I could probably do it now, because Ghost is super easy, but one step at a time.

I have big plans for the site to coincide with my big plans in the real world. I have three separate businesses up and running, and I'd like to talk about them. I'm reading some fascinating books, and I'd like to mention them. I'm meeting some incredibly interesting people, and I'd love to highlight their work.

I'm hoping this site, in its newest iteration, can serve the various types of content I want to share in a way that makes it valuable to others.

So thanks for stopping by. Thanks for reading. If you would like to be updated with new posts and emails, or if you'd like to comment on a post, please Subscribe now. Hopefully this is the start of something fun.

Oh, and it also has Dark Mode!