My new website design is finally finished! I’ve been picking at this on evenings and weekends for a while now trying to get a design that is more functional and does a better job of communicating what I do and how I do it. It’s been a learning experience to say the least and I’m sure I’m not 100% done (I never will be), but I’m happy with the new layout so far. If you’re interested, read a little about the site below, otherwise just click the Home button above to check out the new site. Thanks for stopping by!

I started using Smugmug to host my site a long time ago and had spent a lot of time customizing it. So much time in fact that when I was finally ‘done’ customizing, they released a new version! The new version is pretty nice and lots of built in templates. But I was frustrated that all the work I had done was no longer needed. So I chose one of the templates, and updated my site. As you may recall, this is what it looked like.

I liked how it displayed some of my favourite images on my home page, but I kept getting the same feedback: it was impressive, but it just wasn’t clear what to do on this page. Clicking the images just opened that image, and everything was controlled by the menu bar at the top.

So after years of deep meditation and travelling the globe to find myself (or it might have been while doodling on a napkin), I started working on a new design. I’m a software designer by trade, and have spent years working on web development, but there is always lots of new tricks to learn. I was also a little rusty, since this is the first bit of computer work I’ve done since getting laid off last year. So I started learning all the coolest CSS tricks, Javascript magic, and HTML incantations. I put something together that worked really slick, but then found out that Smugmug doesn’t support Javascript magic. So I pulled the napkin out of the trash and made some slight modifications to make the site less magicky.

So in the end, there was no smooth scrolling for me, and I had to settle for a couple less incantations than I originally imagined, but I’m still pretty happy with the new layout. Have look for yourself and let me know what you think!

More importantly, I ran this site through every browser I could get my mitts on and simulators and devices and so on. But there’s one other thing I learned after so many years developing software: It’s just about impossible to anticipate everything a user will or to release anything without at least a few minor bugs. So if you have any feedback or have any problems, please let me know! PLEEEEAAASE! If you notice something not working, just send an email to info@dannysheppard.com and I’ll get it fixed right up!

Next up… I think it’s finally time I get away from Blogger and find a better blogging platform…