The project I will never finish

I am never happy with my website. Not because I don’t like it, I just have a constant urge to refine it.

As I am once again sitting in front of my computer contemplating a major redesign, I figured I could dedicate a post to looking back at the various previous revisions of this website.

…

This site you are looking at right now, ewpratten.com, was originally the band webpage for RetryLife (a music collective I founded with some friends). The git repo backing the page just happened to eventually evolve into my personal site as time went on.

So, looking back to the first IA snapshot of the RetryLife website, we find a nice and simple landing page:

There were a few other revisions of this page that are sitting on an SD card somewhere. If I find those, I’ll update this page with the relevant screenshots.

Skipping ahead to the next IA snapshot, we have the first revision of my personal webpage:

About half a year later, I did another redesign:

A few months later, I came up with this really fussy design. While pretty cool, the double-overlap of the header was very annoying to build.

The next revision was one of my favorites. A simple front page that scrolls to reveal a list of things I was working on at the time:

The info section of that page eventually got a bit of a refresh (IA seems to have issues with the borders on this one):

After a lot of tinkering, I eventually re-built the entire site (and switched backends) to produce this, an early version of the layout you are looking at right now:

Keep tinkering

I tweak things on this website nearly weekly. If you pay very close attention, you’ll see fonts change, buttons move, the navbar re-order itself, and more.

Its good to keep poking away at a personal website. It is my primary representation of myself online after all, and its not like I haven’t changed over these years.

..And for the readers who are considering building their own websites (I know you are out there), Do it! Its super fun! Your first revision doesn’t have to be your “forever design”, as you learn things about web development, you’ll get better at tinkering :)