New Web Site and Journal

Earlier this spring I elected to review, redesign and redevelop my personal website and journal. The project was inspired by similar efforts this year by the excellent and much admired Craig Mod,  Elliot Jay Stocks, Frank ChimeroJan Chipchase and others.

Each of the aforementioned adheres to design principles of essentialism and simple spare design which I am seeking to apply to this site as it evolves and improves. A casual user may not notice but the first three are built on lightweight static website generators instead of more complex CMS systems like WordPress.

Part of my interest in redeveloping my personal site was to explore and test new platforms for website publishing. After looking at many emerging platforms like Site Leaf and others, I elected to try Forestry which supports Jekyll and Git (or Bitbucket in my case) as the underlying publishing framework and workflow. Some of the advantages of Forestry and Jekyll are simplicity, efficient development and management, and no need for complicated hosting environments with regular software updates and patches.

With the help of a sharp front end developer, I was able to redesign, build and deploy the new site in just a few days. If you would like to know more about the process and experience please feel free to shoot me a question.

In the future, I plan to offer commentary and observations on topics of interest with a focus on those that lie at the intersection of design, human experience, technology, and innovation.