Just as the cobbler’s children need new shoes, often a web designer’s own sites get neglected because they’re too busy working on other people’s projects.
So it was with the site for my photography business, Clearing the Vision. I had a new logo and a clearer focus on the sort of work I was doing — mainly children’s photography for parents and organizations. But I needed my new site to reflect these developments.
It wasn’t necessary to tear down the site completely to incorporate these changes, which is one of the benefits of a site driven by a content management system. Modifying templates rolls out a new look across the whole site without have to adjust every page.
As well as a new palette and new logo, I added a homepage slideshow that uses JavaScript not Flash, so it works well on iPads and iPhones. I also stripped the rest of the content down on the homepage to give the images and welcome message more prominence.
My site is integrated with Photoshelter to display both public and private client galleries, so I adjusted the Photoshelter custom templates to keep the same look and feel throughout.
For my portfolio section, I added Photoshelter’s new large-size displays (which also work well on mobile devices). A few tweaks to the blog to add the email newsletter signup box and we were done with the technical part.
As ever, re-writing the text content and choosing the right images to accompany was where the real time was spent. That’s the key material that really repays attention.