Manhattan Skyline
A couple of months ago I received an email from Google warning me that my website was not mobile friendly and, as such, would receive lower rankings in searches against websites that do have this facility. If I’m honest, the website was not really very friendly to anybody, myself included. It was difficult to build, maintain and most important of all, was hard to update. So I let it fester until it became obsolete. Friends and family told me that it was difficult to find the images that they wanted to show others and the design looked stale. On the other hand, running my blog, Joined Up Pictures, on Blogger, was fun and easy. Even when you have had very little feedback from readers for a long while, it is still a satisfying exercise to put pictures and words together to create a new post.
Once I had decided that a change of website was needed, I started looking at web hosting companies to see what would meet my needs of affordability, modern design, mobile ready and ease of construction and updating. If I’m honest, there was only one company that I wanted to use: SquareSpace. SquareSpace sponsor some of my favourite podcasts (99%invisible, Radiolab, Answer Me This) and it seemed like good karma to use them in return. With a bit more research I realised that SquareSpace was my best choice even ignoring this bias. Building the new site was much easier than the original. Having chosen a site template it’s all drag and drop, and you always see the effect of your changes rather than having to generate a preview. The layout is very clever in the way it reconfigures depending on whether the viewing device is a phone, tablet or desktop. The default styling is very clean and contemporary so I’ve used that unmodified. I’m really pleased with the way it has all come together, and I hope you like it too. I’d be grateful for any comments, both positive and negative. So grahamdew.com has a new virtual home in Brooklyn NY, but I can only guess where the physical server that holds the bits and bytes resides.
Although I’ve been very happy with Blogger as the home for my blog, I’ve now consolidated the blog within the website, so from now on all future posts will be here on grahamdew.com/blog. The blog will remain the place where I will show my latest pictures and share thoughts and observations. In addition the site has a gallery of recent work, which will show you my latest pictures in glorious full-screen mode should you wish.
My plan for the new site is to focus on sharing my work and development with others, rather than making a fixed statement. I want it to be more of an open workshop than online brochure, if you will. With the blog and Recent Work gallery there should always be something fresh to look at. I have plans to extend the content over the coming months, but for now it’s time to go make some art!