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- Published on June 22nd 2007
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2007 / June 22nd/ Organix: Launch
It’s been a long time coming, but version 5.0 of Warpspire has landed. This version code-named “Organix” — inspired by the most excellent album by The Roots took far longer than I’m willing to admit to get live. What you see right now is a mixture of finished, polished, unfinished, and broken ideas. But at some point you’ve got to give in and just launch the damn thing, right? Well here we are.
Fuel for the fire
Music plays an overpowering role in my life. It’s strange, but all of my visual creativity spawns from music. I design best while the music is turned up to 11 and the walls are shaking. This particular design came about through inspiration from The Roots (hence its namesake). The final touches and realization were brought to you by Led Zeppelin. If you look close enough, you’ll find bits and pieces of this design that resemble musical ideas — such as the lifestream header (Listen to Led Zeppelin - Whole Lotta Love).
And here you thought I was being original? Ha!
Foundations
The foundations of this site remain relatively unchanged. Wordpress of course powers the blogging and CMS portion of this design. There’s a good amount of extentions from core around here, but Wordpress makes it so easy to mold, there was no need to even consider another engine. MooTools is a newcomer around here, and I’m glad to have him. I’ve fallen in love with MooTools, a love that’s most likely unnatural. Needless to say, all the Javascript around these parts was birthed from Moo. You’ll also see a splash of Flex somewhere around here. Thought that particular page will have to wait for further explanation.
Superstructure
The most noticable difference in this version of Warpspire is the return of the header image. I’ve added custom images for Featured entires such as this one, and brought back the good old V-dub from Version 3 for the back pages. The rest of the site is mostly HTML, with a couple of Microformats thrown in here and there for good measure.
You’ll notice a lot less backwards-compability around here. IE6 support has been dropped more or less; it represents less than 10% of my visitors, and I don’t want to deal with it. You’ll also notice the rather heavy pageload, especially on the homepage. That was a conscious decision, and one I’m not turning back on. We live in a bandwidth age now, so we’ll just have to get used it.
Heading
The most noticable change for me is the purposeful redirection of Warpspire. No longer am I the rambling college kid I once was. I’ve found my direction in life and know where it leads. This design reflects that in many ways, and so this site will be much more useful for the majority of you. Warpspire will now reflect the little snippet on the home page:
On the web since ‘98, web professional Kyle Neath provides resources, tips and commentary on all things web. Here you’ll read about topics covering design, programming, copywriting, and information design.
I’ve split up the site into three main sections:
- Featured Articles: These are commentary pieces on the web and technology.
- Tips & Resources: I’ve compiled a massive list of little tips here and there that I’ll publish on a regular basis.
- Marks: I’ve grown tired of the inspiration galleries I’ve found. These will be my own little personal subtitution. These are sites that I think deserve mentioning.
- Reviews: Reviews of music, books, whatever spurs my fancy at any given moment.
That being said, I anticipate there will be a lot more content than previously. For those reasons, I’ve provided some additional feed options to your right (don’t worry, nothing’s changing with the current feeds).
This new direction also facilitated a bit of pre-created content. So coming along with this redesign is a host of new articles / content pieces. Here’s the content that came along with the redesign:
Marks
Tips & Resources
- Hack Markdown’s
<code>(PHP) - Exit with grace (Javascript)
- Truncate with fashion (PHP/Wordpress)
Most of the “old” content has simply been re-routed to the Tips & Resources and Feature’s category where appropriate.
I hope you guys enjoy it! Let me know of any funky behavior (I’m sure there’s about a thousand things I’ve missed).
16 Comments
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The Network
All my little projects that I leave scattered around the web. Some for profit, all for fun.
June 22nd | #
Very pretty! After seeing a black and white color scheme go wrong so many times before, this one is rather refreshing. Well done :)
And congratulations on your graduation!
June 22nd | #
I really like the new design. It’s clean and simple. You have some nice ideas in here as well. I’m working on a rejig of my own site and may well “borrow” some bits and bobs :)
Congrats on the graduation as well.
June 22nd | #
I dig the use of small, but readable, fonts all around. A refreshing change from the usual BIG.
June 22nd | #
Congratulations on your graduation friend. The real world is scary, make sure you bring you Leather Armour+1 with you for protection.
Once again, I love the redesign, and good on you for sticking with Wordpress. I can’t wait to delve into to configure my next redesign, and you’ve just inspired me to get going!
June 22nd | #
Niceee, I’m liking this new design a lot, I think the heavy pageload on the homepage is alright because your readers get the benefit of seeing a lot of info aggregated into one convenient landing spot.
Well, happy blogging then! ;)
June 22nd | #
Awesome design. Love it. Information rich, but elegant and clean. I’m envious. Great job.
June 22nd | #
Thanks for all the compliments guys!
June 22nd | #
hey looks great. I like it
June 22nd | #
Looking hot. Glad to see it finally come to fruition.
June 22nd | #
Easily one of the most comprehensive launches I’ve seen in a good long while. Really sweet work buddy. I could stay looking around here for a good long while, which I guess is kind of the point eh :).
June 23rd | #
I like the simple theme very much. It’s very nice.
June 23rd | #
You have done some awesome job with the theme. I really like :)
June 23rd | #
I’ve actually come back to your site once or twice every month to see if you’ve implemented this design yet. Now that you finally have, it looks even better than I expected. You put a lot of detail work into this - the header images are wonderful. My favorite part has got to be the header above the comment form. It reads - “Make a Comment - don’t be afraid, it’s just text.” The theme is amazing. Good work, very clean and “elegant” like Upstart Blogger said.
And congrats on the graduation.
June 25th | #
Nothing less than fantastic Kyle, love your front slide switcher thingie…
What exactly do you do for a living, is it mostly user interface, or is it both user interface and backend?
June 25th | #
Mostly user interface. Specifically a lot of HTML/CSS/JS, and integration with various CMSs and products.
July 11th | #
Before I start, nice name. I love the simplicity and cleanliness of this design, great work. And also congrats on graduating.