Front End Refactor

1.14.2018

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I changed up the front end of this site! It was a long time coming, and could still use some tweaks here and there, but I’m generally happy with the upgrade. I had wanted to restyle it for a while, as the design was originally implemented when I was still in code school.

While my work requires me to be full stack, I’m still far more comfortable on the back end. It’s helpful, and fun, to break out of my comfort zone and try to make things look pretty. I still feel that I’m a bit limited in my actual design skillset, as I tend to gravitate towards the same patterns, such as the full page picture background - I love a good full page background. The mountains are the Rockies near Kalispell, Montana, in case you're wondering.

I spent the most time changing the nav, and I am pretty pleased with how it works (try mobile as well!). I meant throw some more JS in, and in fact, configured Webpack just so I could try out a new framework (Stimulus) that I ultimately ended up not using. I will just have to incorporate it at a later time. I even got to have some fun debugging when I broke the build on the first deploy attempt because of not accounting for my new JS pipeline. But if you’re reading this, it works. I also am now hosting my static images on AWS rather than in my project folder.

Ultimately, while this site is quite simple, and probably will be forever, it will be useful as sandbox for me to try out new things. There’s not a ton of risk in doing so, unless of course I become famous. In which case the inevitable "Man he really writes some hacky CSS" comments should start arriving in droves.