“And they said that it would never happen in this lifetime…”

Um, no. Actually, “they” have all been encouraging me to make it happen the whole way. Heck, just ten minutes ago, I was asked in IRC why on earth I actually bought a .info domain name! (It was actually free at the time in 2005, but I have paid a bit to keep renewing it over the years.) Nevertheless, today, Webmacster87.info passes on to that great bit bucket up in the sky, and is replaced by my new site: The Smorgasbord of Douglas Bell. Yep, yet another weird name for you to make fun of. Whatever. I like it. :)

So why did I make this switch? Well, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I’ve always loved the webmacster87 name, ever since I first came up with it back in April 2004, as a play on words between “webmaster” and “mac”, with the 87 really just being a random number that I picked for no reason. (Its first use was actually a .Mac username, if you can believe that.) That username is not going away. However, a common issue for me has been that it is a difficult name to spell/type correctly (I’m sure that whoever webmaster87@gmail.com is, they’re not too happy with me right now), and I would like to start using my own name a bit more. Hence the reason that my site is now hosted at DouglasBell.us, and my e-mail address will be transitioning in that direction as well over the summer. Another primary reason is that I’m currently preparing to make a major transition in my life as I head off to college. This fall will be the first time in my life where I will living away from home for more than ten days in a row, and a lot more people from my neck of the woods are going to be interested in following what I’m doing. That means that my blog will be opening up to a much wider audience, and so I want something that’s a little more professional-style and more reflective of this new purpose for my blog.

So not only does my site change its colors, it changes focus. Yes, it will still be a personal blog, but it will be a little bit more topical than before, and it will focus a bit more on my personal life than it did before. (Though in reality, anything is still fair game.) Oh, and I’ll post on it a lot more than I did during this past school year. So, let’s take a look at this concoction that I’ve been working on for the past three weeks in more detail…

New Website Theme and Layout

It’s still based on WordPress 2.7.1 (though I hear that 2.8 is a week or so away…), but the theme is now Arclite by digitalnature. It’s a very fluid theme with a nice, professional manuscript-style look that really matched what I wanted for my new site. The modifications to the theme are actually far fewer than my previous site had; pretty much the only visible change is that I’ve made some changes to the header layout, and replaced the cool-looking categories selector with the cool-moving feed icons with links to subscribe to the site. I’ll blog a bit more about my experiences with this theme in the near future.

The layout for my site involves a paradigm shift in how I decided to design it. The blog is now separate from the homepage to give emphasis to the other pages of the site as being of equal importance (even if the blog is likely going to be the most-updated part of the site). Unlike Webmacster87.info, where I tried to cram everything about myself into two huge sidebars, my new site now delegates most of these to other pages, which people can trek over to see if they want. The new sidebar is now much more minimalist in flavor and less in the way.

Quick Tour of the Site

  • The new home page gives you a brief introduction of who I am, and lets you quickly see some of my recent activity. You’ll notice that my Twitter is given much more respect now throughout this site, since it is my other primary means of communication online (often more frequently than my blog posts). My latest tweets get equal billing on the homepage alongside by latest posts.
  • You say “Colophon,” I used to say “About page”. It’s now my Colophon, my rewritten bio which has been cleaned up a bit and beautified with a few pictures. It is a little personally depressing that so much of it is in the past tense now!
  • The Projects page serves the same function that it did on Webmacster87.info, though it is (for now) a bit emptier.
  • My Blog is self-explanatory, though you do get to the index via a /blog, rather than straight on the home page. If you’re reading this, hopefully you’ve figured that out already.
  • Archives and Tags are now part of a submenu under a new History section. Accompanying them are a new Zeitgeist (similar to phpBB Weekly’s Zeitgeist) that will highlight notable posts from my blog for posterity’s sake. And as a special bonus, the old PreviewCast episodes are back in a special archive!
  • Carmen Sandiego is my name for the page where you can keep track of where I am (in the real world AND online) and what I’m doing. Kinda nifty, eh? I spent a long time working on that page…
  • And yes, I now have a Contact form that you can use to get in touch with me if you want!
  • In addition to my blog, you’ll notice that my sidebar now has a “Wall”. Yes, this is supposed to be like a Facebook Wall, or like a shoutbox where you can leave comments not related to a particular blog post. Thought it’d be kinda nice to try out.

Webmacster87.info isn’t going away, either. I’ve still got over 400 great blog posts sewn up in that thing, not to mention a design that still is pretty cool. So it will continue to remain in existence as an archive, and I may refer back to it from time to time, though I have made a few changes to its layout to encourage legacy visitors to come on over to the new ranch. ;)

And There’s More Where That Came From…

I’m sure that this won’t be all, and I’m glad that this new site still has plenty of room to grow. Once I start moving on to college and doing more things, expect some more stuff to be appearing on the somewhat emptier sections of this new site.
Also stay tuned as during the next month or so, I’ll be doing some blogging covering some of the really cool under-the-hood development that went into making this site happen, including spotlighting some of the 20 WordPress plugins and other custom development that help keep the engines turning.

So with that, I kick off a new era for my website and the start of summer! Enjoy the site, and let me know what you think!
–Douglas Bell