New Website (yes, again!)

If you've known me for some time, you are probably well versed in my web design woes.  I started back in 2010 with the platform, Moonfruit (is that even still a thing..?)  It was a silly program and the site looked pretty but lacked e-commerce ability and looked TERRIBLE on mobile phones! 

Then someone told me I should use Wordpress instead. It’s easy, they said. Totally fine for you non-techy creative types, they said. Reader, they were fibbing. Wordpress is really quite technical - you have to get to grips with the templates, the back end interface and also sort out your own hosting. I finally managed to get a working site up, which was a minor miracle in itself, but then the developers who had created the template I chose disappeared off the face of the earth, which meant no updates and critical bits of my site stopped working.

And did I mention the updates? Wordpress and it’s bloody updates were the bane of my life. Every time Wordpress releases a new update, you then have to wait for the developers of your theme to also release an update. Both of these things then have to play nicely with all of the plug-ins you’ve added to your site to make it to things that the original template didn’t do. This never, ever happens. Then you have to work out how to get into all the core files of your site and actually update everything. Wordpress updates really suck.

Anyway, I stuck with Wordpress and picked a new theme, which worked fine for a few years, but then it started to look a little dates and didn’t play brilliantly with smartphones and tablets, which is what pretty much everyone uses to look at the internet now.

So, I started over (again!) with Squarespace and now I have a much simpler, more user-friendly site. It’s much easier for me to use (no updates, yay!) and is fully responsive across all types of device. It was a little frustrating design-wise, having been used to almost infinite options in Wordpress, but I guess Squarespace designs it this way to force businesses to make something clean and functional. I am very much a more is more type of person. It is probably in my best interests to remove the choice to go ‘oooh, I’ll just add this OTHER thing here and if this thing could go WIBBLE, and that page do some kind of unnecessary spinny thing that would be GREAT!’ from me.

Anyway, check out my lovely new site (free from any unnecessary wibbly/spinny bits) and let me know what you think. Or if anything isn’t working.

Thanks!