So... another new layout! Being fair about things, it's been 18 months since I last had a major overhaul. My tastes have changed, my style has changed and I've come up with other ideas for things I want on the site.

I tend to do a complete overhaul every year or so for a number of reasons. The first one being that I believe that people like to see a change. I get a reasonable amount of traffic to this site and I think if people visit and see the same thing they saw 6 months ago with the exception of a couple of pointless tweets; although it might not leave them with a bad impression, it's hardly going to win an award for 'most updated website' either.

I decided to add a blog because, being the relatively opinionated person that I am, I wanted somewhere to voice them. It's also great for keeping the site content current - great for search rankings.

Eagle eyed viewers may notice that it's yet another dark colour scheme (for the 3rd revision). I thought about going for a change and having a lighter site this time, but that idea was abandoned almost as soon as it was conceived. Not that I have anything again lighter websites, but I just think personally, for portfolio sites and the like, dark colours work better. The exception to this is if the site has been designed by one those rediculously good designers that can make any design, in any colour scheme make your jaw drop. Being as I'm not a particularly artistic person, and not very good with photoshop, I decided to stick with what I know. I'm a developer, I'm allowed to do that.

One final thing to note is the technology on which this blog is built. I've worked with Wordpress enough to have an educated and informed reason as to why I despise it. As far as a blogging engine goes, for users who aren't developers that just want a quick and easy blog set up, it's second to none (and to be fair, that is it's primary purpose so really - goal achieved for Wordpress). It's really easy to use and has a truly astounding quantity of themes and plugins, as well as a considerable and dedicate user group.

My bug bear with Wordpress is the way it actually works. It's heavy, runs a lot of surplus queries, stores more data than is necessary and has been built badly. This is due to the core being built by a lot of different developers all with different coding styles and ideas on how it should work.

It was for that reason that I decided to write my own. Don't get me wrong, this isn't anywhere near as fully featured as a mature product such as Wordpress and I won't for a minute profess that it is. However what it IS, is lightweight both in terms of code, data and processing times, and very simple to work with and apply to a set of HTML templates (something I found a nightmare to do with Wordpress). I'm not making this commercially available, however, if you are interested in adding this engine to a project of your own, please don't hesitate to drop me an email.

So I hope you like the new clothes. Any feedback/suggestions, I'd be please to hear them (comment below). This blog is available via RSS so if you're into RSS feeds - subscribe away.

Thanks
Pete