Looking for patterns and ideas on the web took LOTS of time this week.
I spent more than three hours looking at examples of the best of the best websites @ Webby Awards What I discovered is that those sites were VERY simple. One or two colors, some image to suck you in and then just at the bottom of the screen, words like “About us” or something to make the reader scroll down. This is in direct contrast to what my permaculture mentor told me: you only get one click, so have everything the client wants to know on the front page. So….. I’m wondering about the purpose. When someone accesses your site from facebook because you’ve said “click here for more info.”, does that mean that you should link inquirers to a different page than your front page??? Interesting idea.
I really liked dudamobile.com because not only was it a great site to look at, it drew me right into what it was selling: web site design. I signed up and noticed right away that they too were forcing designers to design very simply. I made a front page that I liked and now I will try and copy that by making it myself.
This assignment was giving me permission to get sucked into rabbit holes that I didn’t really need to go down. I was intreaged by the idea of a game called DOTS and that became a small obsession this week. I also got totally involved in a crazy family with a little baby. It seems they have so much times on their hands, they play dress up every Saturday and attempt to get ONE picture. Crazy, but somehow addicting to watch—maybe because I have a 2 year old granddaughter that would NEVER put up with that. If you want to go down that rabbit hole, click here. Make a cup of coffee—it’ll be a while before you get out of there.
So….after all of this learning, I realized that I HAD done something similar to these sites on my own. I made a large header, put the name of the website on a white strip with a black font and then I added a blue background, which was the same color as the header. So….what now? I wasn’t sure what to do…
So I stalled…..Should I continue this practice website for the Alaska Citizen’s Climate Lobby or should I just move on to my own site and work on that? Can’t decide. Drink more coffee. Go outside. Can’t decide. Pull all the tomato plants. Can’t decide. Clean the cat litter. Can’t decide. Drive to town….you get the drift.
So I finally started working on my stuff. I started with trying to re-create the page I had made on DudaOne. Hmmmm. Copyright. I hate copyright stuff. I googled if I could use free images for personal use on a business site. Didn’t look like it. So….I started taking my own pictures. I fixed them in iphoto and exported them to Paint. I had FIVE to choose from. I called my mother for help. She couldn’t decide. I went outside and moved bricks. I posted my choices on Facebook looking for help from the masses. I decided to wait for responses and turned on old re-runs of Gilmore Girls. Here are my five: 
So here I am. I slept on it and picked one, but I needed a different back ground. I blurred an old picture that would do for the background. Now to finally start! Actually, this is what my old page looked like with the new background I made and actually—it looked pretty good! 
Note to self:
How to add a background picture to a page: you need to tell the web page where to find the picture. I finally used the index in the text because I couldn’t get it to work with Chapter 11 on color. It looks like this in HTML:
</head><body><img title=”greenage” alt=”blury solarium” src=”/AlaskanBioshelter/IMAGES/BackGround.jpg”>
!—this is how to put background pic in with html. Note that I have to have the picture uploaded to the server and have src search for it in the right folder. Notice the backslash for the folder path.—!
Can I do it in CSS? I can!
<title>Bioshelter</title>
<style type=”text/css”>
body {
background-image: url(“/AlaskanBioshelter/IMAGES/BackGround.jpg”);}
</style type=”text/css”>
Okay, so I’m making progress. If you checked it out now, you would see the website I had last week with my homemade background in the background.
Upword and onward! A Bioshelter site!
Well, I’m learning something….I just don’t know what.
Here’s what I want the web page to look like:
And here’s my great artwork! (egads!)
Then I decided I could never compete, so I changed the background to a fern in the solarium at sunset.
Lots of problems and I didn’t think I liked the pink—or how small/overlapping I had to make it. This one also goes against the too much/keep it simple idea I had. So I went and took another picture. The point is that the Bioshelter has green all winter, so why not put that on the front page, right?
Okay, so this one is too simple maybe. The ferns are a little out of focus too. What do you expect from an iphone?
So again—the hardest of all things: decisions. Maybe that’s why I like the point and click/build it for you web sites. No decisions and instant professional looking stuff. 🙂
Off to look at fonts.