This is the first post, on my new website! It’s been a long time coming, but I wanted to get it right this time. Anyone that visited the old one will notice that everything functions about the same. The same five categories are across the top, and each one is very similar; but things have been cleaned up considerably. WordPress was used this time as the backbone for the site. Being the popular blog giant that it is, many plug-ins and features have accumulated over the years to ensure we could more easily make it function the desired way. The result is, everything is much easier for me to use on my end, and hopefully easier to look at on your end!

It was quite awhile ago, that work began on re-skinning my old website. First and foremost, there were some funky issues with the gallery. I’m not a programmer, so I couldn’t explain it if I tried, but in attempting to add another category, some twitchy things started to happen. In discussing options to fix it, I realized that you had to click five times, just to see one decent sized picture of a clock. Actually, you had to click a few times to see anything, even a thumbnail! It’s was entirely my doing. I wanted everything sectioned off into categories, and sub categories, with descriptions and groups for each clock. Anyone visiting for the first time may not even bother, and may never see my work! Now I have categories, but within each, there’s just a block of thumbs laid out to be clicked. You can use the arrow keys to toggle through the images as well, in a familiar “lightbox style” display. Also, the default is the “mechanical” section, and without doing anything, the thumbs for those images are already on the screen.

The other noticeable change is the shop. I’ve been selling my quartz work through the site. On several occasions, the sale wouldn’t go through, due to, well, something (I’m still not sure what the error was). This was completely unacceptable to me, and I was pretty mad about the situation. When someone decides to spend $1,000 plus dollars on my work, the last thing I want is extra hassle for a buyer, and issues that diminish their confidence in the whole transaction! I’m now using a “big cartel” shop. While it isn’t custom designed to blend in with the site flawlessly, it always works flawlessly.

There’s some cosmetic changes as well. The background is pretty easy for me to swap out, so when I finish new work, I can showcase it there, as well as the blog, and the gallery. I’ve also worked on a logo that I’ll be using on things now, and I wanted to put that on the site.

I can re-write the bio pretty easily too. It’s about due for an update, so I’ll have to look at that soon.

One more thing: The gallery now has a category for tattoos. I set aside a block of photos for all of the die hard fans that decided to ink some clockwork on themselves. If you’re one of the people pictured in the gallery, and I somehow missed your name, or the tattoo artists name, let me know, and I’ll be happy to add it! Also, if for some reason you don’t want to be pictured at all, let me know, and I’ll remove any photos of you, and your ink!

On the next few posts, I’ll show you what I’ve been up to while waiting for the site to be completed.

Thanks for visiting!