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Well, I haven't been updating my blog recently, but I have managed to put some effort into a "redesign" of my geistlinger.com site.

I say "redesign" in quotation marks because the site really had no design before. It was mainly used as -- and still is -- a testing ground, a repostitory for different versions of my resume (both old versions, and different flavors of my current resume) and other non-Web functions. It was like a big file server with little apps here and there.

The index page had a rotating quotation, and there were a couple of links, and that's about it. Not much. I have directories up the ying-yang that I've put out there for people to view at one time or another -- freelance projects, demos, freebies and so on -- but there was never a coherent design/theme to the site.

I've changed that. The new version went up sometime last week; I think about Feb. 3 or so, but I'm not certain, to be honest.

The new version contains the following:

• Coherent navigation: I should actually call this "any navigation" because -- as mentioned -- there really was never a coherent site before, with any real navigation scheme.


• Four distinct, color-coded areas: I have used the same motif in each of the four sections, but set a different palette for each. Was a good exercise. The four areas:
  
  
  
  1. Home
  
  
  2. Postcard Zone (with lots of additional code for error trapping; why I never had that?......)
  
  
  3. Resume -- repackaged to match the site design; links to existing, alternate versions of my resume, including a newly coded "print version," which should be more browser complient
  
  
  4. Word Me! -- Quotation engine that I ported from SQL Server to Access for this site. I'll keep the local SQL server as the master, and publish updates periodically.
  
  
  
  

The Word Me! section was tricky in that I had to -- in the codebase -- support two database types (MS SQL Server and Access) and the corresponding datasources. It's dynamic, so the same codebase on my local server hits my local SQL Server; on geistlinger.com, it hits the Access datasource there (I don't have a SQL Server on geistlinger.com; too expensive and not terribly necessary for now).

The downside of supporting the two databases is that the stored procedures I had written for this module can't be used anymore (Access does not support stored procs). Well, I could use them still, but I'd have to conditionalize all the queries based on what server the codebase was on...no thanks. Was messy enough keeping the two datasources clear.

Is the new site perfect? Hell no. But it's a lot better, and it's build out using standards as much as I can. Very few tables -- only for tabular material, not for layout. DIV and SPAN instead. And -- of course -- a healthy use of CSS.

I think it's a decent-looking site now, at least for a non-designer.

And -- whether or not it is a decent-looking site -- it's a hell of a lot better than what it replaced.

And I added the Quotes to it, so that's a nice addition. Good demo of dynamic areas and so on -- search, results, link to additional info and so on. Along with the Postcard gallery (needs more pictures! -- and a data redesign....), some good examples of searching and other types of dynamic tools. Good to have out there, and if outsiders want to use them, hey, all the better.