Some Dude on Twitter is building out his new site in public and is keeping a changelog as he goes. Such a simple idea – I’m doing the same.
I won’t waste time with updates from day one of this site. Let’s just start from yesterday – 6th September 2022.
For those interested, this site is built on WordPress using Elementor, Crocoblock and the Hello Theme (by Elementor). It is hosted with SiteGround and the domain is with Namecheap. I use Email Octopus for my Newsletter, although I am manually adding contacts at the moment, until I get round to integrating properly. Analytics are done by Fathom.
Complete redesign – 6th September 2022
I find myself taking a lot of inspiration from specific sites. I’m quick to fall in love with a design and like to pull ideas from it. An older iteration of this site took some ideas from the original Fathom Analytics site – a little different to their current one.
This weekend just gone, I spent far too long moving old notes from Bear and Drafts back into Apple Notes. I pass through seasons of life searching for the perfect notes app (it doesn’t exist). After a while I find my notes all over the place. So I moved everything back to Apple Notes (for good this time, maybe!). Anyway, in those notes was a link to Brian Gardner’s site – one of the cleanest WordPress sites I’ve seen. His website header was similar to what I already had, but really pushed me to streamline it to what I have today.
I’ve been a Dark Mode user for as long as Dark Mode has been a thing, it boggles my mind how it took decades for U.I. to just not be white. My eyes thank you Dark Mode. With this strong pull towards the darkness, I’m always a little reluctant to go fully dark because I’m still convinced most people like the bright elegance of a white screen. So I compromised with myself. My website header is now a beautiful shade of #333333 and the rest of the site pure #FFFFFF.
I’ve been catching up on a lot of Ali Abdaal recently as I’m finally finishing ‘Atomic Habits‘ by James Clear and Ali is very hyped on that book – for good reason. So I was visiting his site last week and was immediately drawn in by Ali’s site header. A very clear message explaining what he does in a short sentence. His site also had an email capture form, very similar to my existing form at the top of the site. I took note.
My previous site design was influenced by Dann Petty after I bought one of his courses. You can still see parts on that design on the new site. Namely the idea for my email and phone number to go front and center.
Between the two sites and my original ideas, I’ve landed on a header I’m very happy with. Now it is time to fill up site with content.
My design process is to not get stuck on trying to create the perfect idea. I like to borrow little snippets I save whilst exploring online. These examples are proven designs being used by creators with followings in the millions. If they are good enough for those guys, they will work for me and you. I’m sure even these sites have taken some level of inspiration from other designs. It is okay to design in this way, it is how we all learn.
More about the rest of the site soon.
