What better way to celebrate the day of the book than seeing my website — that personal book one writes every day — being reborn again.
It had been long since the site had gathered a remarkable amount of different kinds content. Broadly speaking, there were like three web pages living under the same roof:
- My personal/professional page, with information on who I am, what I do and, above all, what is my scientific production.
- Resources I use in my work (teaching, research and outreach).
- And the two blogs — academic, personal — with up-to-date content.
- …and all the activity on several social networking sites and that, somehow, was also reflected here.
On the other hand, those very same social networking sites as well as the widespread use of search engines caused that the main point of entrance to the site ceased to be its homepage, and to literally become any page.
It thus became an urgent need to undergo some reforms, while bearing three main goals in mind:
- To rethink how content was sorted and the overall site architecture.
- To make possible that any page could operate as a homepage (as a good landing page).
- To provide the user with access to related content from any page they were on, and to facilitate the identification of the author (i.e. me) where this was particularly important (e.g. from the scientific production page).
Unlike what had been the norm in the past eight years, this time I asked out for the help of professionals. In particular the help of Anna Fuster and Daniel Julià, from the Pimpampum studio. They were able to rethink the site without luggages from the past or sentimentality.
The result is in plain sight.
At the visual level, I would like to highlight the immense work of updating and managing the graphic look and feel, focusing on how different kinds of content use different colours, or how content was repositioned when it was repetitive or ‘interfered’ with other content, to name but a few amongst a long list of details.
At the technical level, the most notable is the idea of ??”widgetizing” the site so that one can put any piece of information (a blog, the literature, the “about me”, etc.) elsewhere when deemed necessary. Furthermore, the management of the whole thing or the creation of new pieces has been made really easy and robust, so the site can now grow without the bounds to which was constrained.
I can only thank the good times — as creative as challenging — that I spent with @tartanna and @daniel_julia, from whom I learned a lot in a short time.
And to the reader, both the regular and the occasional, thanks for being there, at the other end of the wire. As always, any comments are welcome.
