This website has been due for a redesign for years. I first registered the domain in May 2003, and used a WYSIWYG web design editor, Namo WebEditor to create the pages. It was easy, but only if you do not strive for coding perfection. Now, I don’t claim to be able to produce perfect code, but the more I learned about coding, the less I liked what I did here at Grump’s Place. Then the problems came…

…and multiplied. I began trying to tweak the code and re-write some of the pages, or portions of it anyway. Oh man, I totally screwed some up so bad I had to get rid of them. You see, as many of these types of “out-of-the-box” web creation products do, they insert a bunch of code that just isn’t your standard fare - especially if you have learned as little as I had at that point. But I wanted so much more.

So, I learned more and I practiced and spent time on great websites and forums like SitePoint, Position Is Everything and of course, W3 Schools Tutorials. The more I learned, the more I wanted to change this site.

Sometime in 2007, I realized I wasn’t capable of designing the graphics and, although I had learned something about XHTML and CSS, I hadn’t really figured out how to build a template that would give the site the same look and feel on every page. I had some ideas and I had the avatar I had been using since shortly after I joined my first Internet message board in 1994 (the very same one you see to the left). It was a picture in my mind, but I didn’t quite know how to put it in pixels and code.

So, I had a contest. I can’t remember what site it was on, but it was an interesting contest. A couple of people didn’t seem to understand what I wanted and submitted some crap I never gave a second thought to. One guy, Blake, of Skywide Design, seemed to have the best interpretation of my ideas. In fact, his rendering was quite nice. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to get the coding, which I felt was okay, since I thought I could handle that part by now.

When I received the source files, I was very disappointed. I paid the contest winnings for a PSD file that was about as messed up as you could get. There were elements in there that didn’t even go with the design and the template wasn’t sliced - split in the various pieces you need to be able to plug them in the code and have the design look the same on a web page as it does in an image viewer. Since I tend to get a little, shall we say, “anxious” when I feel an injustice has occurred, he finally got tired of putting up with my shit and just stopped responding to my emails.

Well, I’ve been burnt worse. I figured some day I would be able to do something with it, or I would be tired of it and just forget about it. As you can see, here it is. It’s Janurary 2008, I finally got around to doing what I’ve wanted to do for years and I was able to use the design Blake came up with after all. Well, sorta. I rebuilt the design, re-did all the graphics, changed the colors ever so slightly and turned it into a WordPress theme. The theme was also the original creation of someone named Bucey - the same theme I use on my 1 Foot in the Grave website, which I have also modified considerably.

Thanks go out to Blake for the work he did. I’m sure he has gotten better at his craft in the last 2½ years and I wish him all the best. Now it’s onward and upward for me and Grump’s Place. I will spend some time replacing the old pages of the site, although they are still hiding here on the server. Pretty bizarre, but it’s hard to just throw stuff away when you’ve had it so long. And I will try to add new content that might interest you as time and temperment permits.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 at 9:29 pm and is filed under Creating A Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.