I'm gonna be honest here, I wasn't too happy with how the website looked for the past few months. As Weebly (the gr8 one) started pumping out these website themes that looked really modern and simplistic, I looked at my site and felt inferior. I've been on the Internet for my whole life. I had my own site by the time I was 9! But back then, a lot of the creators around me were using Webs to look flashy and gif-y. You can see the appeal of sparkles to a bunch of 10-year-olds. I opted for the more muted look on my rad Weebly site *cough* go Weebly *spat*.
More and more people started abandoning their sites for reasons I can't remember. In retrospect, there were probably two common reasons for this. One: maintaining a site is actually pretty time-consuming. Creators feel like they constantly have to churn out stuff for their readers. Two: they grew out of their own websites.
I'm glad I never went too extreme with the fancy embellishments because I would be horrified of my site. That's child's play, man. Sparkles are too childish for this big girl. There was one site owner a while back that actually wrote a blog post about deleting her site. I probably talked about it on this blog, but basically she was saying that her site was childish and embarrassing. The early sites were pretty gross, honestly. Imagine a bunch of toddlers talking a lot of nonsense and spewing glitter. As these people grew up, they realized they wanted no evidence of the kiddie monsters they made. DELETE. (But I'm not kidding, glitter was everywhere.)
No, my site was never as glittery. But I could still recognize the remnants of "child" throughout it. I was not okay with it. So you're asking, "Why didn't you change everything you didn't like?" You see, small tadpole, Weebly makes it slightly tricky when it comes to design. Changing a theme could wipe out all those glorious picture headers. It takes a lot of work to change all the components to your liking. Personally, I also had troubles with a thing called sentiment.
For the longest time, I saw that old font and couldn't bring myself to change it. That font was a part of me for years! It represented the site in a way. So how am I supposed to change to an entirely different theme when I can barely let go of a font?
Now that I've made the switch, I've got a bit more pride for this site. Though I still find some parts a bit icky, I can compromise look for functionality. You might not have any feelings on the subject, but that navigation menu is rad. I'm willing to make just a few tiny changes along the way. I'm also eager to add a few personal touches; I can't let a design and some photos online make up my entire site! I'm really into the handmade homepage header and I want to make more stuff like that. Maybe I'll make one in replace of the Journal of the Internet News and one for MTMT. New summer project, WOO!
Well, thanks for reading! I originally wanted this to be a simple, lighthearted post but oh well. If you read through it all, kudos to you! Have this song as a reward: Be Together (Vanic Remix) by Major Lazer ft. Wild Belle! I'm really getting into those hip, electronic beetz, right kids??!