Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Website redesign plans

After a fair amount of research, I am deciding to go with RapidWeaver on Mac for my website development, and I'll probably be choosing the Avante theme from WeaverThemes.

RapidWeaver does seem VERY simplified (maybe even at some points, too simplistic) but that's probably a good thing because I keep saying how I want to "focus on content rather than design" for my new website, and "just have it look good and work well without having to learn jQuery" to quote my own thoughts. :)

I've looked at some other options and this does seem to be the best. The ability to buy your own add-on themes from external designers is the main reason I'm choosing this, because it allows you to basically farm out your jQuery programming and graphic design to a professional, and all you get is a much smaller amount of knobs to control pre-defined colour palettes and document widths and so on. These themes are tested on all browsers, some even have iPhone and iPad support too. So this really seems like a great way to get an awesome new website design, and all I really need to think about is the content and how I want to tweak a ready-to-go design.

I did some quick tests with the trial version of RapidWeaver and I think this is gonna work well. Once I decide on a theme for sure I'll buy the theme as well as RapidWeaver and get working on the new site. Till then I am gonna sketch out a rough website plan on paper. I've got a bunch of ideas for the new site including a more dedicated travel section, a consolidation of all the "about me" stuff in my current website, and a nicer and cleaner photogallery which will show off only some of my more recent and best work.

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