Redesign in Twenty Oh Nine

So I think this is it. I started this blog some time in 2003, before mov­ing to Blog­ger in 2005, then Word­Press later that spring. In that time I’ve learned a lot about web design, which isn’t to say that I’ve got­ten any good at it. In its cur­rent Word­Press incar­na­tion, kbps has gone though ten or more redesigns, all of which I’ve con­sid­ered post­ing a kind of ret­ro­spec­tive screen­shot tour about. That may hap­pen, how­ever embar­rass­ing it will be, but in the mean­time I think I’ve struck on some­thing that can last for maybe longer than any of the other designs I’ve cre­ated. Some of them were really abysmal. But this one is both prac­ti­cal and com­fort­able for me.

The archive pages still need to be con­structed — tag archives and search results are still pretty use­less, just show­ing pag­i­nated post excerpts rather than some nav­i­ga­ble overview. The front page needs to be a lit­tle more com­pre­hen­sive than just show­ing the most recent post. But these things will be addressed. For now I have what I think is a robust frame­work, so much of which was admit­tedly just an acci­dent of flail­ing around in GIMP.

I know meta-blogging is lame, but kbps began as and mostly still is just a prac­tice ground for web design. In fact in most cases it’s been an obsta­cle to writ­ing due to my not being happy with the way it looks. I’ve been try­ing to change that for six years, hope­fully I’ve got­ten somewhere.

Things are a lit­tle stark at the moment, which I may or may not like, and may or may not solve with some new col­ors or graph­i­cal, tex­tural embell­ish­ments. But the shape of it, I think, is close to ideal. It feels like a load off, any­way. I actu­ally get a lot of Google traf­fic, and every time I see my stats I cringe a lit­tle to know what peo­ple are see­ing. But I think I’m okay with this.