Whoops, I created a monster (Dev Log #3)
Hi everybody! I thought I’d write a quick update on where I’m at, and what my plans for this blog are.
I am currently working on moving my blog off of Medium. At the risk of coming across as bitter and petty, here are the main reasons:
- Flexibility. Medium does not allow for much customization, and although that is okay for me now, I have future plans for my blog that just aren’t possible if I stick with Medium.
- Control. Right now, any changes that Medium decides to make to their platform will affect my blog. And honestly, I really don’t like some of the recent changes they have made. For example, the “clap” system which takes the “like” system and makes it completely arbitrary and inconsistent. I could go on, but then I would be ranting.
After some extensive research and testing, I settled on Wordpress as my new landing site. I knew that although it would take far longer to learn than any of the other options, it would be worth it in the end.
Because Wordpress has basically unlimited features, I wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t get caught up in those options and end up with a blog that was some kind of weird conglomeration of things I didn’t actually need. So, I began to sketch out my dream blog, on actual paper, free from all preconceptions of what my blog should be. It was during a sketching session at IKEA (pro tip, they have free coffee for IKEA Family members) that I landed on what I was sure was the perfect idea.
See, here is The Dilemma that my design has to address: I have two different types of blog posts. The first, these developer logs, which are best enjoyed chronologically and in real time. (Pitch → Follow the journey of an artist learning how to code!!) The second type of post is when I spend hours and hours illustrating it and making sure it has a beginning, middle, and end. These posts are summations of lessons I’ve learned along the way, wrapped up with a pretty little bow. They can be read out of order, because they are self contained.
These posts have completely different expectations for the readers, and so I knew that I needed to separate them. The question was how to do it in a satisfying way? It didn’t seem like enough to just separate them with different tags. So, here is the “perfect” idea that would show potential new readers just what they were getting themselves into:
Let me explain the vision, because it goes far beyond what I’ve actually been able to implement. Basically, my home page would be filled with this (strangely sassy) interactable illustration of me. Around it would be two cute little text boxes pointing to my head and to the iPad, each explaining the different post-types. Hover over my head, and it would fade a bit to reveal a cutesy little brain to click on, to delve into the dev logs. Hovering over the iPad would do something similar, but for the self-contained articles.
I was in love with the idea — which is never good. I spent hours and hours to make what you see above, and then began to run into some problems. First of all, this whole plan requires an extreme amount of work just to make sure it doesn’t creep people out. You know, things like adding a blinking animation for the eyes, so that I stop staring, wide-eyed, into the endless void.
Then, of course, the more immediate problem:
This hellish monster appears when the screen size shrinks. So yeah… I have no clue how to deal with that.
Anyway, it seems that my perfect idea was a bit much for me (and Wordpress) to handle.. so I may have to go back to the drawing board. It’s alright though; even if I had managed to carry out my perfect idea exactly as I envisioned, it would probably still creep some people out.
That’s all for now, folks! Talk to you soon!
-Zoe
