In the meantime, I’ve moved back to Blogger while I sort out the things I lost.

Don’t anticipate frequent blogging, or even regular blogging, just a return to the same, boring drivel you’ve come to expect from this page.

Also: I’m switching to a default Blogger theme simply because… I don’t care. Whilst I’d love to have a beautifully designed website, I have neither the time nor the talent to make it so. Other projects take up what little free time I may have.

Background

Since the inception of this blog some months ago, I’ve been using a Blogger template as the default design. The template, a simplistic one designed by Douglas Bowman is quite beautiful for most bloggers. Since the Blogger redesign, these templates have been seen everywhere and, thankfully, replaced the ugly ones previously used by many Blog*Spot members.

I’m very appreciative to Mr. Bowman and all the Blogger staff, as this template allowed a quick jump into my blog, however, I wanted something more original and a bit “lighter” than what was provided.

The Design

The design is one of the more simplistic ones I’ve done. It features a one-column layout and only the bare necessities on each page. The “Of the Minute” link blog is now given a greater prominence on the main page. I’ve also taken things one step further with the link blog and actually created individual post pages for the entries as well as archive pages.

This redesign features an “About” page in addition to the Blogger profile link at the bottom of each page. Blogger profiles just aren’t personal enough if you’re hosting the site on your own domain.

Speaking of Blogger, the site is powered almost entirely by it. In the previous revision of the site, I put the link blog in the sidebar with an iframe, something less than perfect. With this new revision, I’ve used a Javascipt found on Jason Shellen’s website (of Blogger fame). “FeedLess”, the Atom Syndication script I mentioned appeared to be created by Chris Wetherell. I haven’t yet finished integrating it as well as I’d like, however. Little things take time to fix, but I’ll get there.

The next major thing on the todo list is a search page, powered by Google. After that it’s simply adding the archive links on the pages in an efficient manner — hopefully more efficient than what’s on the link blog page.

Also, the site’s CSS validates, however the (X)HTML may not on every page. It will… eventually. And the site hasn’t been thoroughly checked in IE, so I expect parts of it may break.

Color Choices

Purple and (blue) green aren’t usually colors that come to mind when designing. However, while “shopping for colors” I remembered Adam Polselli’s 2005 color forecast and referenced it for this site.

The purple you see is taken straight from his site. I played with the idea of brown for a while but fell back to purple as a more vibrant color. The blue-green is based on a desaturated color while the occasional red is straight from the forecast. Overall, I feel the colors work quite well.

Finale

No website is ever truly complete. They keep getting improved and added onto. This one is exactly the same way. I hope that this latest revision is quite an improvement over the last. If you run into bad links or visual errors, please let me know (samuelsidler [at] yahoo [dot] com). Enjoy!

In addition, I’ve added my iTunes referral link on the side. When I post about music, I’ll be posting a link to iTunes for you to preview the songs. Listening to previews is for your benefit and doesn’t earn money. Purchasing music, however, does. Again, if these links bother you, just don’t click. There’s no one forcing you.

A new post follows either tonight or tomorrow.

That said, it may take longer than previously anticipated. It would appear a lot has happened while I was gone and a bit of catching up is in order as well as maybe some rewriting to focus on the points brought out by some others.

Soon though, I promise.