Hi friends! Happy 2014. I've been pretty awful about keeping up with this blog in the past, but i'm very determined to make this year a year of change, and get things back on track. If you can't tell, i've been hard at work re-doing and updating my website. There's a ton of great photos from 2013 to check out in the photography section, and a whole new page titled "Millennium Management". This year i'm embarking on my first big project that will carry me into the "post-grad universe", my own management firm. Millennium Management should be a big, continual project, and i'm excited to bring you all along for the ride.
I'm also hoping to find a decent balance between blogging about music, this crazy industry I work in, and some fun personal endeavors of my own. This will hopefully, slowly turn into a great mix of 20-something adventures into the world of maturity and adulthood, as well as a place of discussion about the ever-changing world of music in 2014.
For now though let's just talk about how much EASIER this new web platform is!! For those of you who are unaware, I host through a company called Squarespace. I originally was introduced to them because they're who Castro chose to host my other blog, Ultra5280 through when we did our big rebuild nearly two years ago. When i saw the UI i was impressed, and despite my lack of knowledge of CSS, the ability to code what i wanted, where I wanted showed a unique initiative from the company from my perspective. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of different website companies out there these days, and everyone gets the same basic stuff done. I've tried plenty, as web design is something i do really love and wish i could spend more time learning about, but I'd never felt as free as I wanted to be able to design a site truly how i wanted, without being restricted by my lack of coding knowledge. I didn't want to get stuck using the same boring templates that everyone else uses, but i didn't want to have to waste away sitting at my computer trying to: A) learn how to code so B) my website could look how i wanted. Squarespace gave me that answer.
my old website in Squarespace 5. RIP dear friend.
I got my website up and running in a decent amount of time when i first created it. Although I found there were limits to the amount you could customize the different layouts, it still was more than most other services I'd used before. I had to resort to creating my own headers for the different pages of the site so that they'd all match, which was terribly inconvenient, and it took HOURS of battling with their text input section to get my social media icons to line up just right, but slowly but surely it all fell into place enough for me to be happy with my layout. Overall, I was content. Not entirely happy, but content. I'd tried a software called "Flux" once before, which allowed a mix of coding and visual design, but it relied much more heavily on code than i was comfortable with. You had to build you entire site page by page, and after laboring for days to create what i wanted to simply be my "home" page, I was thoroughly exhausted. I knew I'd need to use some kind of website with some templates, I was just frustrated I couldn't find any I was in love with, and the limited flexibility Squarespace gave me was enough. I thought that i'd settled, until today.
Just this week I took the time to switch my website over from their old platform, Squarespace 5 to the newer Squarespace 6. You'd think this is no big deal since it's the same company, same website, yadda yadda, but you couldn't be more wrong. This updated version has a completely changed UI, new templates to work with, and even more streamlined user interfacing in regards to how you build the site. I've been messing around for only about 6 hours, and after some of the first minor hiccups, i'm head over heels in looove. The simple "home page" i'd labored to produce through Flux looked nearly identical to the homepage on my website right now. I wanted those three photos, all hyperlinking to different parts of the website, and here it is!! YEEE!
If you all had seen the happy dance I did when that went live you would have laughed for days...
The point being, Squarespace 6 is fabulous. I think it's intuitive, easy, and very easily customizable. If you're looking to move your website to a new service, or just need to create one in general, this would be my first recommendation. Yes, it's a paid service, but they offer free 14-day trails for you to test it out and see how you like it. I am a very frugal person, but I've found that paying for a site that works like this has been well worth the money. And for only $100/yr, you get access to the site, a decent amount of storage space, and they will buy and register a domain for you. Not a bad deal if you ask me.
Play around and see what you think, but i think my new layout is much better, making interaction easier for users, and the new Photo gallery interface is so significantly updated that that itself would have made me happy. I hope you all like the big changes! Feedback is always welcome if you have any qualms, or if i'm missing important info from the old site, please let me know.
xoxo
-M