Onwards and Upwards

For the last few months I have been thinking about the direction I want to take with regards to my career and online identity. Since I launched this site in the summer of 2005 it has catered for all of my needs; a blog (which used to be a collection of HTML pages linked together, oh dear), a portfolio, about and contact pages.

However of late I’ve been thinking about moving my portfolio section into a site of it’s own. Sure you could argue that it’s good to have everything together but my reasons for splitting are simple.

In my new years resolution post from December the first thing I highlighted was the fact that I wanted to write more. I’d like to think that I have achieved this to a certain degree as I have been trying my best to consistently publish content to the blog aswell as having an article published in .net magazine. By moving my portfolio away from this site, it will hopefully allow me to dedicate more time to my writing and raise the profile of this weblog.

I’ve already started mocking up plans for a new design that will allow more emphasis to be placed on the actual content, everyone seems to be saying this these days. The layout and design are still very much in the development stages, so far I have mocked up a very rough wireframe in Fireworks before designing within the browser. I now also officially have some branding to show off on this site that I am very, very happy with. When the site goes live you will notice my homage to Fred Perry. There’s just something about that laurel.

Don’t fear though, certain elements of the site will remain the same even in the new design, I spent alot of time crafting elements of this design, elements that I still very much like and as such I see no reason to throw them away, especially as this design is only approaching it’s fifth month of existance. The site will still be created in HTML 5 and colour schemes and typography will be staying the same, although with @font-face appearing everywhere of late I may yet be tempted to incorporate some within.

With regards to the my actual portfolio, as I said above, I’m looking to move that into an entirely new site. I know the domain I want and I even have a few wireframes created. However, it isn’t all easy sailing. I’m trying desperately to contact the company who currently hold the domain but after several attempts to contact them I have got nowhere. More on that later, I’m hoping something will come of that within the next seven days.