There has been a lot going on with this site over the past few weeks. First there was the move to WordPress, which is still one that I have nothing but happy clappyness about. Today there has been the rolling out of the new flavour. A while ago I set a mini challenge to myself to create a new flavour every few months to end up with one per season. It came about from the fact that fashion and a lot of design areas have seasons, I wanted to try that with websites. There have been 4 flavours and now with the move to WordPress there are still 2 that I am working on bringing over into themes. With the launch of this latest flavour sees the return of allowing you to select what flavour you want to view this site in.
The central idea around all of the flavours is coffee flavours. With this in mind I just had to do one based around vanilla as this is infact one of my favourite flavours. When designing Vanilla I took inspiration from the vanilla pod as I have always found them a bit like slugs and rather odd that such nice flavour comes as a result of these weird strips.
One of the other constraints I set a while back for this site was that the design had to be fluid. Initially this has meant completely 100% widths. Vanilla takes a different approach and uses max-width setting so that the page sits on the background. I still wanted the content to be the key on this site and the background was chosen as it reminded me of the skin texture on the vanilla pods.
This flavour also sees the launch of something that was at the core of this site when it moved from the realms of pre-hosted blogging a few years ago. The idea was to literally do what the name says and make diaries of websites. Over time this took a back seat as I was more and more focusing on the engine I wrote myself. It was always one of those ‘to do’ things which I fully admit never got done. In various posts I did chart but there was never a devoted section. I have now corrected this with the creation of Website Diaries. These diaries will be by website and currently there is only one for this site, expect more to be rolled out over the next few weeks. Website diaries will follow the site’s life and this can be for existing ones or ones that are just at the thought stages. I want it to be a journal in the sense of laying open the process of creating and launching websites. The contents of these diaries will range from sketches, designs, maps to development details and coding used.
Well, that is about it for updates on this site. I hope everyone enjoys the new features and flavour for Diary of a website.
Another great theme yet again, well done. It is really nice to have a selection or as you say ‘flavour’ so people can use whatever works for them. We are individuals after all with different tastes :)
Thanks. I am glad I’ve got my flavours back :) It is fun having the change every few months for me too. I agree – different tastes are what makes the world go around.
I actually like this a lot. The three column layout works really nice and I dig what you’ve accomplished with the max-width approach. Still fluid, but more dynamic than simply setting the width to 100%. Something I plan on playing with when it is time to redesign my site again. Nice work!
Thanks Matthew. Yes the max I really like and I am going to use this a lot more I think. It gets around the problem of screen resolutions nicely I think in combination with min width.
Like the new flavour! Its nice to see a UK designer creating something a little bit different from the current plethora of ‘samey-looking’ sites. Keep up the good work pushing the boundaries and altering expectations.
Set the trends – don’t follow them.
Really nice design you’ve made yourself here. Feels distinctively rustic with the dark wood grain background and contrasting white content block. Plus I love the three column layout, which works a treat
Again a bit thanks to all. I am happy with this one and I can annouce that already the next flavour is brewing in my coffee pot. Sneak preview = chocolate and raspberry ;)
Well this, flavour thing is really great, we can choose between different things, and that’s pretty nice, thanks
Hoo boy! That’s some site you have!! Terrific!
Hello,
your blog is beautyful. I will visit it again.