Girls Can’t What? Version 2.0 Complete

First let me say a word of thanks to those of you who have been with me through this past year as I have been piecing this site together. Today, I finished the final theme and layout for this site. For the technical folks among us, here are the challenges I faced in getting to this point and a little history, if you’re interested:

Web Design Goals:

• The Layout has to work in all browsers, including cell phones and small screen devices, because I check my email at Walmart. ;)
• The colors have to be attractive but not too girly. It’s MY site – and these colors are purple – NOT pink!
• The layout has to be simple and easy to navigate, but not too busy. Must be easy on the eyes to look at because I spend a lot of time here. ;)
• All aspects of the the site have to WORK. Bug-free. None of this –> ~X(
• The design must promote a community atmosphere and invite people to leave their mark. I want to make and keep friends. :D
• The site must be mostly maintenance free so that I can focus my time more on my art (new designs) and less on hacking code. (Although my geeky side really has no complaints here. B-) )
• The design must highlight my artwork and promote designs in a tasteful way by using them as accents throughout the layout. Because – let’s face it – I gotta sell stuff so I can eat. The “starving-artist” image just isn’t me. [-(

Challenges (in no particular order):

• Cross-browser compatibility
• Web Standards
• Getting the components and plugins to work
• Logging in/logging out issues, cookies, caching, blah blah blah
• Crappy Google Ads
• Lots of other bugs and junk that I don’t want to think about anymore.

History:

• September 2005 – first web site design created in MS-Frontpage and uploaded
• January 2006 – Began learning CSS and SSI in order to to create a dynamic/interactive web site
• February 2006 – Discovered the Joomla! CMS and installed.
• March 2006 – June 2006, worked on the site theme by experimenting with various colors.
• June 2006 – September 2006, began to build a web community using a variety of components
• October 2006 – Recognized a need to simplify and began to scale back and work on a simpler, lighter theme.
• December 2006 – Launched new modified “blog-like” theme
• January 2006 – Discovered too may bugs and maintenance issues, plus current theme was not working in all-browsers so I migrated the entire site to WordPress. Modified an orange-colored theme to work temporarily while I styled the final theme.
• February 12, 2007 – The official Girls Can’t WHAT? theme is launched and named GCW 2.0. Think I’ll go take a nap now…

PS – I’m not naive enough to think that there aren’t still bugs, so please holler if you have any trouble with any part of the site. Thanks!