site birthday 2 π
happy birthday symliadoo.com!
i'm a little behind, 'cause i've been busy! but november 28th was the second anniversary of my website being live!
there's still a lot to do, and many things i never got around to finishing, but! i'm happy to continue working on it :>
so! what's been goin on in siteland?
blog
well, i made an entire notebook/blog on my site, and then proceeded to go back to bear1.
π
its kinda wild, how much rigamarole i went through just to end up back where i started. sometimes you have to figure it out before realizing what you wanted was right there in the first place, y'know?
anyway, this is what it looks like right now!
it's kinda funny how i did like, maybe a week or two worth of work, and ended up not using it π
it's alright, i learned a lot regardless! it wasn't necessarily a waste.
webdded site
anyway, i also decided/plan to remake my layout from scratch!
i think part of the reason i was struggling, was because i was having a hard time figuring out organization! so i thought maybe it's time to change the layout a bit, and experiment with a side navigation.
i think that maybe this will allow me to organize everything better.
since i'm making it from scratch, i wanted to have more embedded accessibility, organization, and semantic html this time around, so that way it's just a nicer and cleaner site!
i'm also planning on trying to learn and rely on php more instead of javascript, so my site has less bogging it down. i scored a very poor score on my site's carbon rating, and i'm taking it to heart some, at least!
i also know my site could pose to be more accessible, so i want to try to build it from the ground up, especially visually! i know my links in particular, while cute, could be better. once i figure out a palette i like, i'll be making these changes to my blog as well!
art zone
so i redesigned it again since last, completely removing the art blog idea all together (i'll just use tumblr for that).
this is what it looks like now!
there's even a dan cameo :>
while i like where its headed, i think i could do better. i made this back in july, unlike the other layouts that were done recently, so it'll definitely be re-evaluated. i'll probably have a similar set-up though!
i based the home page off of a louie zong-type vibe, then you click to see what's in each section! that'll definitely stay the same.
but, that's for another day!
oc portal
i'm really excited for this :D
i decided to make it simpler from what it originally was.
so this was going to be the definite design:
i liked it a lot, but after redoing my main site layout, i decided to pair down on the visual clutter! it almost turned into a left nav too, but i ended up organizing it in a different way to get around doing that/picking the priorities in the navigation.
and this is what it looks like now!
i struggled so much with the oc portal. there was just so much i wanted to say, i wasn't sure how to say it! but i really wanna keep things simple, so i took the parts i wanted the most/were the most important, isolated them, and made them the center of the main page. and it's more fun to look at! i'll miss the floating 'berrytown village' logo and nav, but i think that what i made will be better long term :> i'm also planning on writing the site as if its lore compliant! so it truly will be it's own portal. i really tried to do a balancing act, and made it so i was satisfied with it, while also still making it easy and fun to navigateβ and i threw in some animal crossing/stardew influence in the vibe and wording, too! :D overall, i think this'll bode well for me working on it over the course of the next year.
i decided to add more lowkey cool effects, like the sun image changing to a moon or what have you throughout the day! i think it'll just make it fun without it being too overwhelming :>
i also decided to set the map up with a simple text link rather an image, and the 'ask someone for help', is the 'random oc' button! my thought process behind this is that you'd just ask a stranger, and the stranger could be different depending on who it is! so it felt like it made sense! (though tell me if it doesn't, i'm definitely trying to make it easy to understand as well!)
what about guidecreative.net?
well, due to the amount of things that happened this year2, i haven't gotten the chance to work on it much at all :/
good news, kale released the layout code for their fansite, so i'll be using that as the base code, which'll save me a lot of time building the framework :>
i still wanna make it, and after getting inspired by blake watson, i decided at some point i'll do what he did and make the site, and add an email subscription so people can get notified for when guide creative goes live. it's gonna take a while, and not everything is going to be live same day, but i think it's time for me to talk about it more openly, and start building around something that i've been working on and off with for a few years.
i really think gc will be a huge boon to the artist community, but alas, i am a tired artist with sleep apnea and i just hope you'll be patient with me3 (Β΄βο½οΌ)
don't worry, i'm not doing this alone! i'm just slow and don't know what to ask for, so delegating is difficult atm as my views on how i wish to organize gc change. it'll probably be easier once i have a layout for the site made, to be honest.
anyway, i've yapped enough for this blog post (lol)
here's to another year! i hope to continue making my corner of the internet for a long time :> and to not keep remaking layouts π€£ one day, maybe.
til then! i did a sleeper update in october just to have some stuff live cause i wanted to replace things, like my about page, for a really long time. ৻( β’Μ α β’Μ ΰ§»)