As I promised so long ago, I have redesigned kadavy.net. With the exception of the masthead I’m still going ornament-free (after all of the effort it took to get the Dundee Theater to put my name on the marquee, I wasn’t about to omit that picture), but the typography has been tweaked quite a bit. I’ve also added my portfolio, inspired by Stopdesign’s Movable Type managed portfolio. With some ingenuity, and some modest PHP skills, one can manage all sorts of content. Douglas Bowman (stopdesign) posted a tutorial on making a portfolio with Movable Type, but maybe someday I’ll write a post covering some of the things he left out. Using the Movable Type content management system will make it easy for me to keep my portfolio updated. Other new features are…
- My “Greatest Hits” will direct newcomers to some of my most popular posts. They aren’t necessarily the ones with the highest number of hits, It’s more of a judgement call.
- Thanks to AJ Kandy, I had the idea to put those annoyingly long archive lists in drop-down menus (duh!).
- If you are one of my linked-to, don’t worry that I don’t have links on the home page anymore – they are everywhere else on the blog portion of my site and that gets more traffic than the home page. I have tried to be pretty selective in the sites I link to, and only chose some with some sort of personal relevance, rather than pick some site just because it’s popular (sorry kottke and all of you other obligatory blogroll staples).
- You’ll see I’ve also included a couple of samples from my portfolio and some of my latest posts from Be A Design Group on my home page.
- I dropped the current books and music for now. They are too much of a hassle to keep updated, and who of you really cares anyway?
- As usual, I have omitted the Movable Type Calendar, because it is useless and a waste of space.
- I still have AdSense ads within my blog, though it seems a limited number of ads show up on each page. I have made about $1 a month since I started using it eight months ago. I hope that improves
- My code isn’t perfect and probably doesn’t validate. Give me a break, I’ve come a long way in the last year. I’m also hiding the CSS from some older browsers. If Ethan Marcotte doesn’t want to deal with it, I certainly shouldn’t bother.
- Following great advice from Joe Schmidt, I have added links at the end of each post to enable you to easily post them to del.icio.us, and a link at the bottom of the page to make it easy to post kadavy.net to del.icio.us. If you aren’t familiar with del.icio.us yet, don’t get involved, it’s too addictive; but if you really want to know, you can go to del.icio.us and find out.
You may notice a sort of “campaign” emerging, starting with the new tagline: “Get to Know David Kadavy.” Stay tuned and I hope you enjoy.
aj said,
June 18, 2005 @ 7:49 pm
To give credit where credit is due, I got the idea for wrapping archive / category lists in drop-downs from another blogger who unfortunately I don’t remember at the moment - a lady who does templates if I recall correctly. Also documented here at Learning Movable Type. But I’m glad I could be of some assistance
If I may give some constructive feedback, I find the line leading a litle tight - I’d open it up a bit. But a great redesign, much simpler and cleaner! Congratulations.
kadavy said,
June 19, 2005 @ 1:33 am
Thanks, AJ. I’ve loosened it up a bit now, but that’s just the beginning of the tweaks that need to be done. I’m pretty sure I’ll be in a constant state of redesigning. It’s alot of work!
Mary McKinney said,
June 22, 2005 @ 6:46 am
David,
Don’t ever get rid of your masthead. It is awesome. I’m jealous — want my name in lights too.
aj said,
June 24, 2005 @ 6:39 pm
Looks nice with the looser type. And yeah — fantastic masthead
Simanek said,
June 26, 2005 @ 3:46 pm
Very nice! I can’ t believe the Dundee did that for you. I agree with a preceeding commment: it’s simplicity is a great improvement.
joeschmidt said,
June 28, 2005 @ 7:51 am
I just drove by the dundee the other night and, if I remember correctly, the neon was red. Amazing, the Dundee theatre put your name up in lights AND changed the color of the neon. They must be big fans of your blog to honor your re-design in such a way. But really, who could blame them?
kadavy said,
June 28, 2005 @ 12:54 pm
What can I say, Joe? They will go to great lengths for me.
Bennett Holzworth said,
June 30, 2005 @ 11:37 pm
When I finally came to see the redesign, I thought it was a joke. I thought. . . “Is he making it look bad just to be funny?” I shook my head and read the post. Then after reading your comment about hiding the CSS in older browsers I realized what was wrong. I have to admit, I still use IE sometimes. I checked it out in Safari and it looks great. Sorry it has been so long since I have visited.
I’m jealous of the portfolio. If I actually knew how, I would probably set mine up the same way.
kadavy said,
June 30, 2005 @ 11:53 pm
Bennett,
So you’re the one! That would be a good joke, though. I keep meaning to display a message just for users of old browsers. I know there are alot of designers who still use IE, and even on OS9!!!
Maybe some day I will publish the portfolio as some sort of an application that people can plug their own stuff into. It really was alot of work to put together.