Introduction

When the assignment was given that I was to design a personal website, I knew immediately what I wanted the content to consist of: my writing. My only problem was trying to convey the other aspects in my head through HTML and CSS.

Purpose

As far as my website goes, I think of it as the most complete manifestation of myself on the internet. While Facebook and the like can give small representations, they are still very limited in their customization and overall personality. I find that I enjoy the overall freedom that a personal website creates versus a more limited approach.

This could also be a possible portfolio for potential employers, as it contains an almost complete archive of my writing, which was thoroughly reviewed before posted.

Design

Menu

I decided early on that I much prefer top-menus as opposed to side-menus. I find them easier to navigate and make them even more separate from the actual content of the page, which is what the visitor is really looking at. It is out of the way and not distracting. The thick font catches the eye upon first glance, but isn't too over-the-top that it takes away from the rest of the page.

Theme

As soon as I saw "Puzzled," from FreeCSStemplates.com, I thought that I had found the perfect template for my site. If I could have, I would have left it almost exactly how it was (minus the placeholder text). Granted, it makes it more personal having edited the pictures and the fonts and such, but I found the format already very user-friendly, especially the column on the right, which I turned into a "Featured" section.

What I decided to change, I found altered the feel of the site drastically, while still maintaining the ease I enjoyed from the original design. The banner with the blockquote originally had a color sceme of green and gray and that made the other neutral colors on the page seem to accent that. With the new banner, which features more black and blue, I feel the site is more "cozy" in some respects.

Content Choices

While I wanted this site to be primarily a writing website, there were other elements that I wanted to add. I mean, it's a personal website and should therefore reflect the person who is designing it. That is why I added the "Music" section, which consists of songs created in a computer program called GarageBand. Copies had floated around my friends, but I wanted a complete anthology of the songs. Now they are downloadable on the site.

The "About" section was created primarily for people who either stumbled on the website and didn't know me or to potential employers to get a rough idea of me without being overindulged. I wanted it to be short because it is not the primary reason why people would visit the site.

The main reason to visit would be the "Columns" section. This is just a collection of all of my humorous writings from the past four years or so. It gives a fairly complete picture of how I write and in what different formats.

Conclusion

A lot of the time used for the website was uploading content. Since a lot of the content was already written, most of the time revolved around proofreading it, converting it to PDF format and uploading it.

The CSS was not altered too much, but a lot of the HTML was stripped out as some of it was unnecessary (such as a bottom-menu). My main focus was to make the site easy to navigate, because if people can't find the content easily, what's the point of having content in the first place?