Mission
To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what I want DJR.com to be, and my ideas on the subject are always changing. I've never been much of a blogger, but I do want to use the site as a means of writing about interesting (or not-so-interesting) events in my life or ideas I've been exploring. I want the site to be a portfolio of sorts, a place that showcases my schoolwork, my work-work, and my hobbies. It's both idealistically and pragmatically satisfying to me; it's a wonderful idea that people from all over the world can learn about me, see my art, get in touch with me, and perhaps even pay me money to design something for them. Plus, as I am essentially a self-centered person, a personal website is a healthy and productive way to get out some of that narcissism.
The Design
Layout
It's hard not to sound lame when you talk about something you've created. Am I happy with the way it turned out? For now, I suppose. There's normally about a two-week grace period during which I appreciate and enjoy my own work before I begin to loathe it. Is there room for improvement? Definitely.
I was looking to do something vastly different from what I had done before. I was getting sick of creating these flat, modern-looking sites based around a logo in the top-left corner. But I didn't want to get too artsy-fartsy, because the design should support, not detract from, the content.
The symmetry of the header has a traditional elegance that is reflected in the scripted lettering of the initials. Since I wanted it to be more like a façade than a header, it has hints of architectural structure. Flanking the initials on either side, the spotlight images establish the three-column layout and integrate the global navigation with the content of the page. The division of the navigation bar reflects the different navigational approach that the site takes, organizing all content by its "historical" context on the left and its type and subject matter on the right. This, along with the two spotlights, allows each page to be simultaneously situated and cross-referenced in two separate navigational structures.
Texture
Texture is something that I feel has been missing from many of my sites in the past. For this site, I simply used textures from around my house. Textures on this site include my house's exterior stucco walls, the driveway, the marble fireplace, carpet, and the aging stone fountain in our courtyard.
But more important to me than any of these textures is the JPEG algorithm. Since Intro to Painting and Improvisation in Digital Animation, I've been getting into the whole idea of creating art that embraces its medium instead of masking it. On this site, I intentionally used complex textures and lower-quality JPEG images so that the compression artifacts would create texture on the page as well.
Typography
The font that this site primarily uses is Lucida Sans Unicode (called Lucida Grande on Macs). In the past, I've used Verdana almost exclusively on my site, and I wanted something a little different. I used Lucida extensively on images for the Palos Verdes Peninsula High School website. And if I ever get bored, I can switch to Tahoma or Trebuchet.
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A Custom-made ColdFusion CMS
My analogy has always been that a Content Management System is like a lawnmower. See, without it, building a site this expansive page-by-page is kinda like grabbing a pair of scissors, getting on your knees, and manually cutting your lawn. So, I went out and got the parts (namely, ColdFusion Markup Language with an Access database) and built a fairly simple lawnmower essentially from scratch.
So why didn't I just go down to Sears and get a lawnmower? See here's the thing: interspersed in the lawn, I want to have bushes that are trimmed down to be shaped like dolphins and pandas. No lawnmower I've ever seen can do that; this takes individualized attention. Although I want my lawn to conform to a general aesthetic, I don't want to make everything too boiler-plate, lest my site...errr...lawn become monotonous. So, I've struck a balance: something that allows one little guy to mow a decently large lawn, but still have time to pay attention to the details. As has probably been made clear to you, I know nothing about gardening. Let's move on.
My Frickin' Sweat
So this CMS thing is cool and all, but it doesn't keep me from having to sift through code on a daily basis. There's still a lot of manual designing and coding that goes on, not to mention a lot of effort to make the site XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS 2.0 compliant. Read more about my efforts to make this site accessible.
How It's Done
Hosting
Since the beginning of the millenium, Millenium Systems has graciously and wonderfully hosted this website. Based in Irvine, CA, this is a web hosting company I would recommend any day.
Construction & Maintenance
This website was created on my generic 1.9 GHz Pentium 4 desktop computer, built by the friendly folks at Palos Verdes on the Net. Running good ol' Windows 2000, it's been with me since my sophomore year in high school and has been a great travelling partner as I migrate from coast to coast. Although it had gone through various prototypes beforehand, the main layout and CMS of this website were created mainly between the dates of July 27 and August 8, 2005.
Practically every image on this site has at least passed through Adobe Photoshop CS, and much of the layout and graphics (such as the DJR logo) were originally created in Adobe Illustrator CS. Macromedia Flash MX was used on a number of drawings and animations. The ColdFusion Content Management System, the site's XHTML, and its CSS were all coded in an extremely outdated program called Allaire Homesite 4.0.
This page was last updated on August 8, 2005.