Introducing Version 8

Finding inspiration

In June of 2008, Jason Santa Maria launched a new version of his Web site and wrote about the concept of “art direction around content” for the Web.  That was a concept I had been thinking a lot about around that time, so I was very interested in following what he would do with the system he was proposing to use for his new site.

A few months later, I saw Jason speak at An Event Apart in Chicago (where his ‘Storytelling By Design’ seminar reinforced the ideas he was exploring on his site) and had a few minutes to chat with him about his experiment.  Seeing his site continue to explore these concepts and taking inspiration from AEA, I began to consider bringing some of these changes to my own site.

In late 2008, I began working seriously on the new version of Pumpkin-King.com – in part because of my desire to experiment with more design variations based around content and in part because I knew that my 10-year anniversary as a designer (and the 10-year anniversary of the site itself) was coming in 2009.  As part of that 10-year anniversary, I wanted to shake up the site a bit and do something a little more than just another redesign.  The groundwork for what would become version 8 was laid.

Starting over

I actually had the new site pretty much ready to go a few months ago, but I kept hearing people (including Mr. Santa Maria) talking about ExpressionEngine and singing its praises as a CMS platform.  Looking at the state of my new site, I realized that while I was doing some things differently in terms of how I presented content, the underlying structure of the site itself fell a bit short of the radical new version I had wanted for this 10-year anniversary.  Back to the drawing board.  Hello ExpressionEngine.

Much of the praise I had heard prior to diving into EE centered around its ease of use.  Truthfully, I didn’t find it all that easy to use and I spent a number of frustrating nights trying to figure out how all the pieces of EE fit together (I had particular difficulty dealing with the ‘comments’ module – which was a large part of the reason I decided on EE, in order to allow site visitors the ability to comment on individual posts).  Admittedly, this frustration was due more to my lack of preparation and planning than to ExpressionEngine itself. I tried to dive right into the system with very little study into how the it actually worked.  Since everyone I had spoke with had attested to how easy the system was to use, I imagined I’d figure it out as I went and that using the tool itself would be the best way to learn it.  That plan worked to some degree as I actually had much of the site working with EE, but I really felt like I was missing something, that I wasn’t fully taking advantage of the tools that the system put at my disposal.

Another thing that I had heard when I first began looking into ExpressionEngine was how helpful the user community was and how in depth their message boards were.  This was true, but the boards were so in depth and over my head for the spotty knowledge I had at that point, that I felt a bit overwhelmed and I was beginning to question whether or not using ExpressionEngine had been the right choice for me.

Starting over…again

Frustration aside - it became clear to me that I needed to start over (again) and get a better understanding of the basics of ExpressionEngine – using something more than the ‘quick start tutorials’.  I went looking for books on EE and found one lone title, ‘Building Websites with Expression Engine 1.6: A clear, concise, and practical guide to creating a professional ExpressionEngine website’ by Leonard Murphy.

While the aforementioned tome didn’t answer all my questions, I did give me enough background into the basics of ExpressionEngine that I was able to start using the message boards more effectively, mainly because I now understood the terminology and assorted pieces that made EE what it is.  In short, the book gave me the basic knowledge I had skipped over on my first go-around.

A new site, a new system

I’ve heard some people say that when first using ExpressionEngine, you will have that ‘ah-ha’ moment where it all comes together and makes sense.  After reading (most of) this book and playing around with my installation of EE (which the Computer Doctors were kind enough to host for me as I played with the beta version(s) of my new site), I had that ‘ah-ha’ moment and things quickly began to make sense and fall into place.  A short time later, I had a new site that not only allowed me to control design at the page level, but which also gave me a very easy way to maintain the site, make updates and add new content through the CMS features of ExpressionEngine.  I also was able to take advantage of features like the comments module, rss feeds and search capabilities and add things to the site that no previous version of Pumpkin-King.com had ever contained.

Besides having more control of the site and visual variety for the pages, I am also hoping that this new system – which essentially sets a baseline style sheet and then uses page specific sheets on individual blog posts to override the baseline and make any necessary tweaks required – will keep me satisfied with the site by granting the designer in me the ability to add a new look and feel as often as I’d like through the flexibility of designing each ‘Pumpkin seeds’ blog post or new page differently when called for.

So there it is.  Hopefully over the next few months, as additional posts/pages are added, you will see the idea behind the system I am working under begin to show though as the visual variety of the site becomes more and more widespread.  I added a number of initial posts for the launch to give the site some weight from the get go, but I imagine that as the site grows, so will what I am doing with it and how it all plays together.  I anticipate this edition of Pumpkin-King.com being around for some time now, but then again, I always intend that when a new version launches. I’ll hopefully at least make it to the site’s 11th anniversary without a major redesign, but no promises - I am a designer after all.