Updates

The GreenWise Gardening blog is my main project these days, and the only section of the AdvencherUs site that is updated regularly. I decided to discontinue posting in the AdvencherUs Design Wordpress blog for the time being, but may resurrect it after I re-configure all of the sections of AdvencherUs, from the recipes to the Hawaii article to the Cat Corner, to be mobile-friendly with a responsive design.

The gardening blog and my related internet gardening updates on Twitter/Pinterest/apps are taking off nicely. Sometimes I'm in the mood to refine the code, to curate the non-gardening content of Advencherus, but it's sporadic these days. In related endeavors, I'm learning the html/css of building email, and continuing my reading about modern web design practices.

Still having a lot of fun with the "Ghetto Gardening" articles, but perhaps all the time spent on gardening, writing, and taking outdoor photos could be re-directed into my job search this fall and winter.
In place of the static Hawaii article link image at the top of my homepage, I want to figure out how to install a carousel that scrolls through links to different noteworthy pages of the site.
I want to eventually put together photo essays/articles that include camping adventures and other California trips, maybe under an "Exploring" section in The Grreat Outdoors.

Recently added content includes a new series of Container Gardening articles, in the Grreat Outdoors section.
Thinking about re-naming the Blog, Essays and Art section to convey that it's more of an archive than a sample of my recent writing or artwork.

Realized last week that even though this site was built with Dreamweaver in 2011-12, based on a tutorial written in 2007, I can edit the content in any text editor! ...Still a long way from getting this up to modern standards, but am learning more JavaScript during my free time and checking out ways to convert the content into something responsive. Wishing now that I hadn't abandoned AdvencherUs for nearly 3 years, it'll take awhile to sort thru all the stuff I've put here and see what I want to keep, discard, or revise. But eventually I'll have a web presence that reflects who I am these days a little more.

An increasing interest in reading about graphic design professionalism and integrity in the creative fields, combined with my on-again/off-again job search, has led me to start a WordPress Blog: AdvencherUs Design.

Spent rest of summer and fall 2011 reading "Game of Thrones" books and learning about social media, instead of building/playing with website. Returning now with a few new writings to add soon, and new ideas to implement.
Might start a design blog/journal.

Old blog entries are now all uploaded.
5 pages of the Wine Journal (about 20 more to go!) are up, and 90% of the Booklist and Movielist are both now available.
Hawaii 2010 article finished, still trying to improve alignment of images in regard to paragraph flow. Or maybe that can wait until the next article.
Quotes page is good to go.
Beltane article and Slough article completed.
Old college essays re-written and uploaded.
Art Gallery now has a decent range of work displayed.
Figured out how to make a more interesting font appear on all pages. (Still investigating whether it works on all browsers.)

I was having a particularly boring day at work a few months ago, feeling like I spend my days doing repetitive tasks I’d learned how to execute perfectly years before, thinking: I could practically put this catalog page layout together in my sleep... when it occurred to me that I hadn’t been growing and improving as a designer that much in recent years.

I recalled seeing many employment ads that specified knowledge of web design as a requirement for the position. I figured that as well as having lots of experience in graphic design for print media, a good grasp of marketing strategy, and expertise in photo editing, I could move into the realm of designing for the web.

And I’d always wanted a place to store and share my photos and writings that wasn’t based on a journal or social networking. My own website could be fun to play with, help my career, and add to my personal sense of achievement.

So I downloaded a trial version of Dreamweaver on my home computer, and later had the full version of Adobe CS5 Creative Suite installed. I completed online tutorials for beginners with HTML and CSS and did some reading about the principles, standards, and differing approaches to webpage creation.

While going through the tutorials I brainstormed about the content and look of my own site. At one point an umbrella “theme” to tie together all the disparate content I wanted (from sailing photos to cookie recipes) came to me: Life is an adventure, this site is about aspects of my life, but is not only for me. I searched online to see if “The Good Life” was already claimed, and that definitely turned out to be too generic. “Adventurous” would probably turn out the same way, but how about playing with the spelling a bit...

AdvencherUs seemed to fit just right. I decided to register this domain name as soon as possible so nobody else could claim it. After spending a day researching web hosting I signed up for an inexpensive, frequently-recommended plan that included domain registration with HostGator.

Over the next few days I created a basic opening page for the site, and made links to the main page with mostly blank, placeholder pages for additional content-to-come. I uploaded all this to the site in late February.

After the initial rush to get something online, I wanted to spend time carefully developing content and refining the design before uploading any more pages. Over the next few months I wrote articles and lists, sorted through photos and scribblings, and sketched tons of layouts and site navigation ideas on post-it notes.

On 5/6/11 I uploaded a lot of the new design and content onto my webpage. My current aim is to learn more about Dreamweaver and gradually come up with a more professional appearance and sensible user-interface for the pages. At this point I’ve got a bit of something in each section.

The look of the site and the navigation will be changing periodically -- whenever I learn new skills, or a whim strikes me to modify and experiment, or I see a design idea I like and wish to incorporate.

Of course, adding more content (articles, blog entries, photos, recipes, wine journaling, updates) will be an ongoing project that will keep me occupied indefinitely.