I held off writing blog entries about technical matters for a long time–just because it’s my job doesn’t mean it has to consume every part of my life–but the lure of being able to do some writing at work and have it be justified was just too great. Moreover, there are a lot of things here that would be good to write about. Project updates via blogging, documentation production, or sharing what we have learned for the betterment of society…. It is one thing to write a help file, or a readme, or a wiki article, but talking about the process that went into the discovery is something for which a blog is best suited.
So, I began a tech blog, and traffic to my website doubled. I enjoyed writing about these things (and my wife probably enjoyed me talking about them less, since I now had an outlet for the thoughts), so when I began a redesign of my website, I decided to retain the techblog. This is its new incarnation, and it will likely stay this way for many years to come.
This week has taught me a lot about CSS and PHP, both of which I had been able to ignore in years past. I’ve always just dropped a CMS in, picked a theme, and uploaded my content. This time, however, I wasn’t satisfied with what I saw, and wanted something with a bit of myself in it. I still used a theme developed by someone else because I’m simply no good at anything artistic. I couldn’t come up with any design ideas for the site. But once I had that design in front of me, I saw things I wanted to change and learned how to do so, largely thanks to a friend of mine, Ryan Burrell, who is a fountain of CSS knowledge and assistance.
For the next few days, I’ll be writing about individual aspects of this site, how I came to the decisions I did, and the conclusions I made regarding design and scripting. I’ve enjoyed the project, but I’m excited to be done with it so I can move on and start doing what I really love: writing content, rather than code.
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