"symphony" in Weblog

This redesign has been 18 months coming. I did the original design over Christmas 2004 but I just couldn’t find the time to follow it through. Since then the design has been through several revisions, getting simpler each time. This version is the product of an anti-shadow and -gradient phase I was going through about 6 months ago, when all the shiny new Web 2.0 sites were coming out. I’ve mellowed a bit since then… I also really wanted to see a return for natural textures. They’ve fallen from grace since their heyday, back about 4 years, on sites like DNA (now redesigned) and the Hayward Gallery.

For the IA and information design I have experimented with a couple of ideas: zooming content and weighted navigation.

Zooming content, which I’ll write up properly another time, is basically content becomming more general as you scroll down the page. This gives easy and intuitive access to recent posts but makes the pages very dense and limits access to older content. To try and balance this I have experimented with the function of search. It’s normally an afterthought, consigned to the top right corner where everyone can find it but no one is encouraged to use it. With this design I wanted to try bringing search to the forefront of my navigation so it’s given pride of place in the dead center, right next to the primary navigation. This random access navigation is is supported by a fairly standard taxonomy, as well as more granular tagging. I still have about 200-odd posts to tag and perhaps 350 to categorise but I’ll be getting on with that behind the scenes over the coming weeks.

There is also liberal use of weighted lists, something I’d resisted up until now. I’ve used the same treatment for everything: categories, tags, chronology and projects all use size to convey importance. I’ve not seen them used as extensively as this and I’m not convinced that it will work but we’ll see…

The biggest change round here, for me anyway, is under the hood. I’ve finally diteched the ropey old CMS I’d been using. I wrote it about 5 years ago as a database editor for Access and I haven’t updated it since. Not that useful, really… So I am incredibly happy to welcome Symphony to donotremove. It was a long time coming but it’s been a pleasure to work with. It’s XML/XSL based, which gave me a fairly steep learning curve but now I’m on top of it I love it. XSL is incredibly powerful, even if it is somewhat clunky, and there is no end of documentation available on the web. I’ve tried Wordpress, Textpattern and Expression Engine, and none come close to Symphony. It just thinks the way I think a lightweight CMS should.

And with Symphony has come commenting. This is a new thing for me so we’ll see how that goes…

I’ve been very quiet of late and here’s the reason. I’m pleased to announce the launch of Content with Style, finally. It’s been an awful long time coming but we’re finally decided that it’s more important to get the site out there than to sit on it until it’s perfect or we lose interest. So, it’s a bit rough around the edges but we’ll improve and polish it as we go on. It’s our first go with Textpattern too, so some things aren’t quite as we might have liked, probably due to not knowing where to find plugins etc.

Content with Style is intended as a resource for accomplished developers. There won’t be too many beginners articles; we’re aiming more at developers who already know at least a little, if not a lot. For some reason there just don’t seem to be many articles out there for people of that level.

I’ve written two articles for the launch: Modular CSS and A CSS Framework. Both aim to highlight alternative ways of using CSS. I’ve been doing the rounds of web agencies for a couple of years now and all of them could benefit from these techniques. I’m new to writing though, so any feedback is much appreciated.

On a similar note, I’ve started porting DNR over to Symphony and I’m very impressed so far. There are supposed to be big things in the pipeline for the next release candidate. Watch this space.

I’ve had ‘convert website to blogging tool’ on my to-do list for bloody ages now… Well over a year. Right above ‘redesign website’, which has been there for 2 years now. So far I’ve been most impressed with Textpattern and Wordpress but I was just looking at Symphony and it could just be a contender. I suspect that it may not be as customisable as I’d like but it appears to be very well thought out, with a lovely interface and I really like the fact that the 21degrees guys have chosen XSLT for their templating language over a bespoke one.