Up to the eyeballs in code
My apologies for a week with no updates, I’ve been busy! First off I’ve been re-building my portfolio, getting it a bit more up-to-date on the code side of things. Why? Well, there was a job opportunity at Karova/Stuff and Nonsense that I was interested in applying for, and my portfolio site was looking a little creaky in light of all I’ve learned in the last year. I now make a solemn vow to update my portfolio progressively, rather than leaving it alone to collect virtual dust for a year.
Anyway, the new portfolio is up and more semantic than ever before. 
The multiple-skin-switcher had to be ditched as I had only four nights in which to re-code the entire site, PHP, XHTML, CSS and all. It will make a return later in the year - hopefully with a few nicer designs too, I only had time for a quick tweak and optimisation of the old ’swiss’ skin, which is the look the portfolio has got at the moment. It’s nice enough, but it’s not got the ‘zing’ I’d like for a professional resume/portfolio.
While I’ve been neglecting the main site this last week I missed the fact that the venerable Dave Shea had linked to me in his dailies! Seems that he likes my butterfly navigation, cheers Dave! I’ll remember that in my redesign…
The re-design mentioned above (and mentioned previously in the DevBlog) is now under way. There’s an awful lot I’ve learned about good coding and design since the last mattwilcox.net re-design seven months ago and I’m now going for an all out blitz of this website. I ought to point out that the core of this site is over three years old, dating from when I was an un-learned web-designer-wannabe. To make an appropriate analogy; it’s like starting to build a house and learning as you go along. I laid the foundations when I had the least knowledge and now I’ve completed putting in the shiny fittings the house is starting to wobble and get rising-damp.
So this time it’s a no-holds-barred update, rather than another slight tweaking. The database has been completely renovated into a much sleeker beast, trimmed from 25 tables to 15 (yes, my database was that badly executed). It’s also much more expandable, flexible and smarter. I’m currently re-writing all the XHTML and polishing off the Photoshop work for a completely new look. I’ve got to complete a lot of coding yet, and then migrate all the existing database content to the new set-up. After that I can get the new design live, which I’m hoping will happen sometime in the next month. I’m really looking forward to it. 
The new site will hopefully have a couple of new tricks up its sleeve too…
Work has picked up, and we’ve landed a couple of interesting web-projects. Obviously I can’t say much about them yet, when the time comes you’ll be the first to know. 
With all that said, I shall get back to the re-design. I’ll do my best to post more this week!