4ptOh

This marks the fourth rendition of droppixel.com dubbed 4ptOh. This was the first time I had actually sat down and put some serious thought into what I wanted the site to look like. When I first created the site, it was created through a rough sketch in photoshop that was then converted over into very basic HTML/CSS. It didn’t last long before I changed that up for a different header and color scheme. That second version didn’t last that long either, it was replaced with the previous version, that was much more minimalist and added the blog. The color palette was simplified, a plain white back ground was used and very simple structure for my information. It was basically one big content container with nothing all that special about it.

This version of the site is far different and superior in my opinion. I actually took time to research various sites and designs that I liked to get the inspiration flowing. I knew I wanted to keep a fairly minimalist approach, but after that I was in the dark for a while. I was eventually introduced to the 960 grid system and wanted to explore that a little further, so I continued to research.

I eventually got to the point where I felt comfortable with what I wanted to do, it was just getting it done. I started off with some sketches on paper. I then took what I had on paper and set up a custom grid and threw some shapes on top of it to give me a rough blueprint of how the site would layout.

The layout concepts changed multiple times over the course of design development and coding. I finally landed on something that I was happy with and pushed forward with getting a static site built and later converted that over to be powered by wordpress. That was a challenge in itself, as I have minimal experience with designing and customizing wordpress, but I am very happy this is the route that I took. I was able to learn a lot about HTML/CSS/PHP in the process.

Some changes from this site to the older versions are: more integration of the blog/notepad content, all powered in wordpress, grid structure, dedicated about page, more detailed portfolio/work page, much more interesting blog design and overall better coding. There are still a few rolling changes that will be made to the site, such as notepad comments and more detailed contact information for freelance design and maybe a few extra functions here and there.