After several months of doing nothing with my site, I finally decided to get off my keister and do something about it. I opened up Photoshop and stared blankly at the canvas. I was eager to design something. But what? A blog was certain but how far did I want to go? Did I want a portfolio? What about page archives? Search? What about all those third party contraptions, like Twitter and Flickr? Surely I might need all those things.

I spent far too much time in Photoshop, creating comp after comp after comp. I made the designs based off my old site, underwater themes, random color themes and more. I trawled through hundred of other sites, my eyes bleeding and my mouse-hand numb. There were all these sites that other people had made and there I was, not really doing what I had set out to do. Blog.

I decided enough was enough. What good would the site be if I wouldn’t use it? Would I really want to maintain my portfolio? Was I really convinced that I would keep a mini-blog up-to-date? I cut my feature list back to its barest essentials, namely the blog post, comments and some links to my friends. I picked a simple design that employed my favorite colors. Once I had a clear vision the fever took over and bit by bit the site began to take shape.

It only took a few minutes with (mt)’s helpful control panel to get my database setup. A quick hop over to Expression Engine and I had my blogging engine of choice. 50 minutes later I had the essence of my site completed. A few days of tweaking and polishing and finally I was ready to blog.

I really couldn’t be happier. I’ve decided to keep things as simple as possible and let the site grow organically. If I create enough posts to warrant archives and a search I’ll get right on it. If Twitter steals my soul and sucks me into it’s depraved voids then I’m sure a little blue bird might soon be perched here. Until then, I’ll just keep blogging away.