I can't speak for any other designers out there but I can admit on my own that the worse part of creating a website for yourself is the dreaded revision. Let me clarify this a bit as revisions can be good, but in the case of my personal site it took on an ugly life of its own.

It all began with the site that I created after leaving CDI College. I put together a new site using some of the skills that I had learned in my studies, along with a new ASP based content management system that I came across. This was to showcase my abilities, and my creativity, so I wanted it to be good. So in 2006 I launched n8worx.com with the design I had.

Years past and I worked off and on in the business as a freelancer picking up a bit of skill here and there. When I landed a permanent position at Acadia University strangely more chances to do freelance work began to poke their heads out of the proverbial sand. I had let my site go, even had my domain name expire, so I decided that it was time to get n8worx.com back online and up to date. That was early 2009, and then the epic began.

I started doing little bits here and there when I got the chance, using skills that had long laid dormant, and others that were rapidly being added to my repitoire as I picked up more and more at my new job. Learning is great but each time you learn something new as a designer you want to show it off. So I would make a new mockup, incorporate new things I wanted, and then I would have to wait for more spare time. In the meantime I would pick up new skills, new concepts, and then come back and think to myself "What was I thinking?" when I looked at my previous work. So the cycle began anew, with a new mockup, almost a complete install with a CMS and then more waiting. Do you get the picture?

So it became apparent that I needed to get something I liked and stick with it. Sure I could add things to it that I learned along the way, but the overall look and feel had to have longevity and the ability to grow with me. I also needed enough time to get an entire concept into working practice. Also, my wife began helping me stay to the path rather than walking off into the "creative jungle". So now here at the end of the road I finally have another site that I feel I can live happily with for a while...but it was quite a journey from point A to way off point B.

Original Website

So this was the beginning of the road. I wanted a cool, sci-fi like feel, some animation, and goodness I just like the color blue. Although looking back that blue might not have been the right one, but it worked, and it looked nice. I had the KustomPage CMS for my back end, and Flash on front (yes, I don't mind Flash even to this day).

First Musings

So here I was, n8worx.com was back online, I had become familiar with TYPOLight as we were using it at Acadia, and I wanted a new feel. Old habits die hard; I went with metallic colors and bevels, quite old school now, but some new skills starting poking their heads up here and there. I got this far in the mockup and stopped having a "what am I doing?" moment. I decided that this was not the direction to go and began doing some more tutorials and looking for inspiration...thank god.

Second Musings

Ooo..I found I liked the web 2.0 look meshed with dark black tones, they usually looked sci-fi in nature (which was always a plus in my mind), and looked quite modern/up to date. I was also much more comfortable with CSS and began mixing things up a bit more to up the presentation value.

Third Musings

So I kind of liked what I did before, but in my dealings with TYPOLight I had also been given a shotgun introduction to jQuery and MooTools. I had found many scripts and "widgets" that I wanted to incorporate, so I pulled the previous version apart and tried applying them to the look and feel that was beginning to grow on me. The biggest hurtle here was the jQuery and MooTools. One,  just cause it works in your static HTML template doesn't mean it will within the CMS framework, and 2, MooTools was the javascript build of choice for TYPOLight. So there was a lot of playing around, but not a lot of progress.

Fourth Musings

I now understood TYPOLight a log better, was very comfortable with CSS, and wanted more visual features to the site. So I went back to the drawing board with the glossy black feel and came up with this. More emphasis on the bacgrounds, and images, using many CSS 3 functions, and incorporating more of what came packaged up with the TYPOLight framework. This one got all the way to online to my personal install on n8worx.com

Fifth Musings

So I was happy, but I wanted less text and more eye candy. I was becoming more of a front end developer, and concept guy and I wanted that to show right away.  Plus I found a couple scripts that I could make work with TYPOLight that I wanted to incorporate. So I took what I had created before and modified it a bit to include these features. All in all not a huge jump, but still the look changed. I uploaded it, began putting in my content and thought I had found the end of the road.

End of the Line

Here I am, at what I think is the end, and I'm reviewing my content with my wife who raises a very important concern, "This is to promote your business, but you have such a heavy sci-fi feel. Do you think that is a good idea?" I was torn, I love that sci-fi look and have always designed in that vein for over four years when it came to my own site, but on the other hand...she was right. It could turn people away if it was just "spacey" for the sake of being "spacey". So for the last time I went back to the drawing board, incorporated some new concepts and when I finished the mockup I set back and knew this was the "end of the line" for this page. I had found a look that worked for me.

A long and often taxing journry all from the desire to show your best is what I ended up having on and off for over a year. Several factors, that I'm sure are clear to you who have read this entire piece, came into play that made this an overly long process. So if I can give any advice to the design world out there let me just raise some points that I'm sure you already know...

1. Don't do something important to you personally in small increments.

2. Design your mockups and sites to not only do what you want to right now, but also for what you might want to do tomorrow

3. Keep your target audience in mind

4. Just cause you know something cool doesn't mean your entire design needs to revolve around it...you canfind other ways to showcase it.

5. Have someone you respect/love/admire to be your voice of reason when you lose yours.

Happy hunting!
Nate