2025 Redesign
So as you can no doubt tell, the site has changed a little bit. The old design felt quite... boring, to be honest. And though it was certainly functional, it didn't really have any distinct character.
I've recently been clicking through a bunch of indie web pages and I've been absolutely delighted by the wonderful amount of creativity people put into their sites. So I thought, might as well give it a shot in a design language I like. A certain design pattern that seems to be having a little bit of a resurgence. That gem of a design language, which was the spirit of the late 2000s and early 2010s. AERO FRUTIGER!
If you've read my older posts, you might have noticed I have a bit of a soft-spot for that era of computing and gaming. I am one of those people who still regularly play games on a PS3 or PS Vita. And especially now, after I relapsed and have once again made a semi-custom Linux rice that follows the aero aesthetic, it only felt right to match my website to my desktop rice.
After finding a cool background image, which matched the background colour I wanted to go for (thanks to Liam / Z2r btw for letting me use them), the rest kinda came together pretty quickly. With the site menu buttons I tried to mimic the "Web 2.0 Gloss" that was everywhere a decade or so ago, back when most buttons where images lmao. Obviously I didn't wanna make the browser load a billion image files (not counting the fanlisting buttons, those are important lol). So I attempted to get somewhere close enough using CSS gradients, which I also did for the window borders around the main blocks of the site. Another thing that I also remembered from messing around with it quite a while ago was the SCM Player you can see at the top of the page. I put some songs in, which I like and that fit the general vibe of the site. And since I'm already making something in homage of that era, I put a small Madobe Nanami on one of the buttons. Idk it just felt fitting, okay? xD
It's certainly not the best looking aero-ish site I assume, but I think it came out quite decently. Although I'll certainly continue tinkering with it over the course of the next couple of weeks.
During the course of this redesign I also migrated the site to 11ty (pronounced eleventy), which made the customisations I wanted to do quite a bit easier than if I had remained on Zola. There's nothing wrong with Zola per se, but it simply didn't offer the flexibility I would have wanted for this new design. I might end up making a separate post talking about 11ty, cause it's very DIY, but I love it.
Also, I'm hoping I can continue doing once per week posts, so maybe I'll be back next week. Who knows lol. Bye ^-^