Wednesday, August 18, 2010

It's been a little while...

Ok, so I haven't touched this blog in a year. Whoops! This is bad blog practice #1. The funny thing about this is I recently joined Elance to look for freelance gigs, one kind of writing gig being blog posting. I took their skills evaluation test and placed in the top 10 percentile. Obviously, I need to practice what I preach.

In other news, I recently re-designed my website. I made several major changes: for one, I finally gave up type control. This was really hard for me to do. In the last version of my site, I saved all my text blocks as GIFs because I love Helvetica and can't stand that some browsers or computers don't support it. It hurts me to see my text in Arial or some even worse font. Not to mention I'm really persnickety about line breaks. But again, it was time to practice what I preach—not having searchable text is bad SEO practice #1. I wish I knew more about web design so I could ameliorate this, because I'm sure there's a way. (I use Freeway 5 Pro if anyone wants to help out).

The other major structural overhaul is I'm no longer using a frame-based site. Before, I had my site sliced into three sections, the header, side nav, and content. The URL would stay consistent because clicking around simply changed the main content frame. I decided it was better, given the different kinds of gigs I'm seeking, to be able to point people to exactly the page that's pertinent to them (for instance, white papers or print advertising). I could have done this before, but they would have simply gotten that frame, with none of my header branding. And who wants to see my site without my pretty mug?

I added new content as well, but it made me realize how old some of my work has gotten. I think it still stands the test of time, especially the very first TV spot I ever did in 2004. Remember, the year George W. actually was elected fairly? Uggh. The one thing that's starting to look old, however, is the OC Register work. I think it's still a VERY smart campaign, but because it was based on the news of the day (circa 2005). it's obviously dated. I mean cmon, McPheever or Soul Patrol? Who even cares about those people anymore? Are our kids lost in Myspace? (Answer: nope). But alas, such is the nature of GOOD advertising... you only get to do it every once in a while :)

Anyway, I'd love it if you perused the new site and let me know what you think. Happy surfing!