Hello, I'm... Carmelyne

I'm a web developer with strong information architecture skills & ability to design simple & engaging user interfaces.

Recent Work...

Version 4.0

February 10, 2009 by carmelyne

Hello site, welcome to 2009!

Goals for the redesign:

Learn from the whole process
Update back-end server stack
Change from LiteSpeed to Apache + Passenger
Protype/Scriptaculous to jQuery
Liquid to Haml
Add an iPhone Specific CSS
Move Feedburner to Google Account
Fresher design
New Section to Showcase work
Move the short about me block to the header area
Improve blog post structure
- Make embedded code snippets more readable and ported to Gist
- Add the "This post talks about" section
- Port comments to Disgus

Approximately every 12-15 mos, I update the design and back-end technology that runs this site. The constant keeping up with back-end server technology is usually my driving force when I update my site. Server administration and front-end development are both my comfort zones so I'm usually eager and always looking forward to this yearly change.

It was an absolute delight to set up the server from a clean install. Now I'm running on Ubuntu Intrepid with MySql, Apache + Passenger, Ruby 1.8.7/Rails 2.2.2 as opposed to the old stack: Ubuntu Dapper/MySql/LiteSpeed/Ruby 1.8.4/ Rails 1.2.3. The Virtual Host setup for Apache on Intrepid is quite similar to Nginx which I found refreshing. I was also able to set up my private Git. I went to town and maximized what I can play with on a mere 256 Slice.

I changed from a Mephisto 0.7.3. blog on LiteSpeed to a Webby powered site on Apache + Passenger. In retrospect, I would have chosen another alternative over Webby because porting from a database driven content system to file system seemed like a backward step but no blog nor CMS supported Haml except for Webby. I must admit the pages are rendered blazingly faster without a dependency on any caching systems. Another plus on using webby was the little to no overhead so it can co-exist with another rails app on the same slice.

The design is not much. It took some photoshop pen tool-ing to create the flower. I stuck with my 3 personal brand colors: Red, Cream and Green. Pink is the in color for 2009. Kidding, I just like Pink. :)

I made a usability improvement with my own blog post. Tags are so 2005 so I added a section for every blog post called "This post talks about". I'd like the viewer to see right away what technology/version is being discussed without having to comb through the post/article. That's two birds with one stone: having the "This post talks about" also increases my keyword density in legitimate ways so that's an SEO win.

I've also made it a point for the Blog Nav to have all blog post titles + link available on a blanket nav. I've called it a blanket nav since it takes up a pretty big space and blankets over. It's just a simple div toggling. If you turn off the CSS for this site, it becomes a simple navigational list for all the blog post/articles. It makes it easier for bots to index the site as well cause when bots hit the homepage, all the links are extractable -- less one page to drill down to. The blog's blanket nav is due for a second iteration already -- meaning more improvements. That topic will be for another blog post so stay tuned.

The 2007 content is still in the process of being ported to this new set up so I do apologize if you're looking for my old posts.

Tags: Design, Thoughts, Playground, Back-end

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