patching & painting

[jennylafleur]

I've been spending more time lately on Pinterest - what a great resource! I've been trying to limit myself to sewing and costuming (although I'm finding myself slipping into food and crafts too) but I'm been pleasantly surprised at how much good (cited and documented!) stuff there is. What has really surprised me is how many tutorials, how-tos and general info can be found there. And I thought it was just for inspiration boards and pretty pictures.

Through all this I just realized that my website is totally unfriendly to Pinterest. All those lovely thumbnails that are the foundation to my spiffy and fast-loading site? Un-pinable. So some revamping is needed to bring my site into the new age of linking and tutorial resource finding. I've already started on the précises, the dress diaries will be next then the study pages.

Maybe it's time to do a complete overhaul of the site, which as painful as it is for me to admit is a bit of a dinosaur. I've even considered switching it to a blogger or wordpress platform. 'Cause I have so much time on my hands right now. *rolls eyes* Perhaps I will just continue to patch thing and wait for the next big change in internet interaction to re-package my content.

*ponders*

What do you think - do you find my website un-wieldy or un-pleasant to troll through? Should my blog and site be more interlinked or is it okay the way it is? For those of you who have switched from a static website to blog format, do you like it, was it worth the effort? (I'm looking at you Jen and Sarah)

Comments

[padawansguide.livejournal.com]

I've thought about this too and I have too much time invested to redo things in blogger, though I thought about it. (Also, there's the issue of not having the content be on your own server too, so if something happens to blogger...) But I'm using it for new stuff because it's just so much easier.

FWIW, I reference your site a lot, especially the regency and 18th century stuff, for your construction notes. So I definitely hope you won't take it down! :-)

[jennylafleur.livejournal.com]

No worries - I don't have any intention of taking things down. Just wondering the best way to proceed into the future with it...

[padawansguide.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't have any real answers. I ended up just linking my old costume site to my blogspot. Each new costume gets a thumbnail on the old site and links to the tag for that costume on blogspot. Anything else was just too much work! (And also I didn't want to break people's links to my old site.)

[quincy134.livejournal.com]

Honestly I love your site as is! I haven't had problems navigating it at all.

[jennylafleur.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for your feedback! :>

[jenthompson.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I moved my site to blogger, but transferring everything has been a lot more time consuming than I thought it would be. I wish I had the luxury of transferring pages over to my blog while my site was still up so I didn't have people upset because it is all gone for a while. And part of the reason it is taking me so long is because of all of my carefully done thumbnails too. Ugh. But other than that, I'm glad I made the switch. For me, it was a relief to ditch the old HTML stuff and start fresh.

[jennylafleur.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for your feedback! I really appreciate it!

[love3angle.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm, I have to say I prefer a traditional web site. Most blog sites are just that, blogs. And they don't have their info organized well enough to find something that isn't super recent. I think a blog format CAN work well if you organize your info so each outfit/item can be easily found without using the search function or scrolling through entries.

[jennylafleur.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for your feedback! That's how I feel too really.

[silkfrocks.livejournal.com]

The blog/website idea is a wonderful idea. I actually have a website to display my art and I find it such a pain in the tush to plug all that information in, so tedious. Have you thought about using your domain name with one of the Wordpress themes? That would work perfect for your site that has so much useful content. I think your web provider may be able to help you migrate your content into the WP theme.

[jennylafleur.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for your feedback! I really appreciate it!

[olde-fashioned.livejournal.com]

But you can still pin the click-to-enlarge pictures, right? It just worked for me when I tried. Yeah, it's somewhat of pain, but it still works.

Have you thought about just pinning a bunch of your things to get some Pinterest traffic?

[jennylafleur.livejournal.com]

Yes but if those larger pics are pinned it won't lead back to my site which defeats the purpose of using Pinterest for traffic. Hence the changes...