I have been thinking about working on my web site recently and actually getting it online. Of course, I think about it at least once a month, but I never actually take the time to work on it much. I guess the main problem I have is that I am such a perfectionist. I want my site to have everything perfect before it goes online, but I just don't have or take the time to research and write all of that content out.

Anyway, I am coming up on a deadline soon. Shane's site hosting is coming up for renewal at the end of this month, and I am planning on moving his hosting to eDataRack, which offers a great starter hosting deal: 2 domains, 2 gig disk space, and 60 gig monthly bandwith for $47.40 per year. I figure I can save him some cash and have a professional host for my own site. Of course, that means that I have to get off my lazy rear and get my site ready to go online.

Which brings me to the real topic of discussion: CSS. My current web site design looks a lot like this blog, with the same colors, background, and logo. The only main difference is that the site's navigation bar is on the left and is currently Milonic's JavaScript menu (it's great!).

I have been thinking lately that I should allow users to choose among a few stylesheets that match their preferences, especially since so many people don't like dark-backgound/light-text styles (they can be hard on the eyes). So, I decided to make a lighter version of the current theme, as well as a very slimmed down format for those with a preference for extreme simplicity. Allowing users to switch between stylesheets is a great idea, and I found the Alternative Style article at A List Apart to help me out. It looks fairly easy to implement, but if you have any experience in this area, please feel free to pass along your thoughts or ideas.

I have also been considering dropping the Milonic menu, since it is JavaScript and some people just don't like JS. Don't get me wrong, it is a great menu; I just want to make the site completely accessible. Once again, A List Apart has two great articles about CSS-powered dropdown menus, and I am excited about the possibility of making the switch to 100% CSS.

My only concern is that it looks like I will need to have the entire list of links on each and every page, which means adjusting that list on each and every page every time I add a new page to the site. I can create a Perl script to make the adjustments, I guess, but it would be nice to have a system that allows me to make those adjustments in one place for the entire site. I guess I could mess around with CSS-powered frames, but I want it to be simple. Hehe... looks like I'm getting into wishful thinking now...

I am also interested in moving my blog to my web site and off Blogger. Derek told me that he had found a Perl-based blogging engine, and I think he might have been talking about Blosxom. From what I can tell, it appears to be a great, free, easy-to-use blog software. Do you have any experience with it or thoughts on other similar blogging software? I want to be able to keep the same features on the blog as I have on the rest of the site (CSS control, etc.), and to completely integrate the two (the blog as my front page, and the rest of the site as extra information). It's also cool that Blosxom is written in Perl, since I am in the process of learning it.

Anyway, if you have any thoughts or experience to share about any of these three areas, I would love to hear some input. I am especially interested in seeing some other ways to implement the alternate stylesheets and menu functions in CSS. I am trying to keep away from PHP, JavaScript and other lanugages that I don't know, since even just learning enough to get myself in trouble will only make my site that much more likely to stay where it is... on my hard drive.

Labels: Technology