About this Site - Intro

Edited 3/6/17 to add in new links and change title.

Introduction

I spent the better part of my winter break revamping my personal website (of which this blog is a component). You can view the old site here: naitian.github.io.

If you want to skip to another part of this walkthrough, I have links to all of the available parts listed for you here:

  1. Design

Setting Goals

I think it's important to consider what the goals, desires, and requirements are for every project.

While I was generally satisfied with the old website, there were some issues that I felt needed addressing.

  • The overabundance of colors pulled from flatuicolors.com was busy, and seemed like it wasn't well thought out.
  • The terminal in the background never worked very well, and ultimately didn't do everything I wanted it to. I wanted a dynamic "terminal" through which you could basically browse the entire website.
  • I had gotten tired of the one-page layout, after also using for the Dev Club Website, so I wanted to challenge myself with a new type of layout.
  • I wanted to start up the blog again, and the original Jekyll blog was kind of a pain to work with. I wanted to minimize the friction involved with publishing new posts, which would in turn encourage me to write more.

Okay, so those were the things that I took issue with. However, there were some aspects of the site that I wanted to keep.

  • I liked the terminal; it's fun and nerdy. So I wanted to keep it, but maybe make it a bit more subtle.
  • I liked having distinct colors for the different sections.