Writing, just in code

You've probably noticed some interesting changes to the blog in the past few weeks (otherwise, I told you to notice them via Twitter). Technically I've been writing, just in code. Unless you have worked a lot with HTML, you probably can't imagine how annoying it was to get that sidebar to do what it's doing with the buttons next to the book cover.

That's not to say I'm [more] special, but I have been putting in quite a few hours to make this blog presentable rather than just useful. Some of you might recall the old black-and-white template I used to use. Go figure that my readership practically doubled when I started using real colors, ones that were easier on the eyes than high-contrast (even though it's better on my color-blindness). Thing is, designing in color is a lot harder for me.

Even so, my work is still far from done. I want to have more than just a blog with links to everywhere else on it. Honestly, I have been using the Internet for about 17 years now and have never owned my own domain name. Despite building an entire site in Flash that sat on my own hard drive, and countless HTML pages on free sites like Angelfire, Tripod, and Freewebs, I just never took the big step forward. Even now, I have a Blogger and a Wordpress site, both free, only one of which I maintain. Kind of unbelievable.

Then again, if I'd registered it six or more years ago, I doubt I'd have had the wherewithal to keep it registered, much less build the site itself. Not that I've ever been afraid of HTML (or of CSS), but website design and implementation can be incredibly tedious. It's even more so when you have no actual content to display (which I didn't). Time passed and I never really saw the point in getting my own domain.

Nowadays, it's a hell of a lot easier to live on the WWW than it used to be. With places like Myspace and Facebook, the hard part is done for you. With Flickr, Blogger, etc., you can have almost everything a real web designer has but without learning all those pesky tags and codes. Ten years ago, WYSIWYG functionality was, well, nightmarish. Now it's been upgraded to only semi-frustrating.

So, there might be a website in my near future. Rest assured I'll announce it in every available channel, and this blog will stay where it is. It just might change colors... again.


If you enjoyed this post, please Follow this Blog or use the subscribe button (below) to receive updates.