Against the Rules

I kind of broke a rule on my blog/site.  I remember studying web design and having it drilled into my head that you should never-ever post a site until it’s complete.  We’re talking flow charts and color swatches.  Meetings and usability groups.  It should not go out to the public until it’s been beta tested and sparkles! 

Well, technically, a blog is never complete and it can change design-wise from day to day.  The idea of posting a-little-thing-here and a-little-thing-there totally goes against the grain for me.  The fact that I downloaded a free blogging system and used one of their design templates (which I totally modified and Cobbanated of course) is unheard of.  I’m supposed to be the one drawing thumbnail sketches, mocking them up in Photoshop and executing the HTML code in Dreamweaver. 

Fuck that.

Why was I sitting there trying to manipulate code to embed video into my site when I can post it (and host it) for FREE on YouTube and then put it into my blog from there?  I wanted to make some cool music player to play my songs but this free blogging software had a ton of free plug-ins that do it for you.  Plug-ins that you can modify in design!  Plug-ins that work!  Did I mention that they were free? 

It does help that I have a background with HTML and all its brother and sister codes.  I know enough to make my site look the way I want and work the way I want, but nowadays I feel more like a web administrator than a web developer.  The web’s been developed and it’s all about open source.  Well, I shouldn’t say it’s been developed.  There are hard-core coding people out there and god bless ’em!  Keep doing what you’re doing folks! 

For some, coding is fun and challenging.  For others, it’s evil.  Hey, I can manipulate code. I understand how it works and it may take me a while sometimes, but I can always figure out how to get the results I want.  But I hate doing it–I don’t hate it, I just don’t love it.  I learned the coding side of design out of sheer necessity.  I wanted my site to do something and no one was around to do it or show me how so I just started figuring it out.  I used to author CD-Rom’s in a program called Director using “lingo” and the Flash came out.  Some of the coolest sites I’ve ever seen were done in Flash but man was that program a bitch. 

I am accepting this new open source thing.  Why reinvent the wheel?  I spent months trying to figure out how I was going to get my words, music, photography and ideas out there online and just days actually doing it with free software, templates and help from a great guy named Gary.