Anastasionico.uk

A new, updated, more charming version of my personal website.

For several years now , I have managed my website,

I see it as a laboratory, a place in which I can experiment, try new features, improve my skills.

Not without mistakes or bugs, but they are part of the improvement path too.

The idea

I published the previous version of anastasionico.uk a bit more than two years ago.
Like for dogs in the web development field, two years are like eight, at least.

A lot of things have changed, new trends, new ways to deploy web project and more secure manner to take care of the code.

So I decided that as soon as the last version of Laravel would come out,  I would have recreated my website.
I have implemented a brand new control panel and new designs features 
My hope was to make it more appealing and surprising at user's eyes. 

Laravel is a free, open-source PHP web framework, intended for the development of web applications, 
Have a look at my blog for more.

The design process

Everything started with a brainstorming,
I had to decide what didn't work with the old version.

What I wanted to add, what I have learned during this time, how can I exploit my new knowledge.

I have removed quite a lot, 
First thing, I was aiming for a cleaner, more understandable frontend, 
In truth, the old pages were a little bit confusing, 

Too much information to look at, less time to spend on the actual things that the users were looking for.

Like the front end, even the backend needed a refresh,
I thus completely renewed control panel.
It now allows me to take control of all the features, 
I can better manage my blog's posts, my project, the outstanding tasks, even an inhouse inbox.

All characteristic that I will provide for my freelance projects.

The development

Pen and paper are the first things I need when creating a new project.

After I have decided what to use and what discard was time to decide how to format the database that will keep all the information I needed.
Then, choose how to show the data on the web pages.

I want this website to look great at least for a couple of years,
It took a couple of days to study the upcoming trends, to understand what people like, deepen my UX design knowledge, learn from the big name of the web.

When my sketches satisfied me was time to start coding, 
Easy stuff, to begin with, a simple layout full of boxes and so on until the final result was looking good enough.

When the front end was ready to rock I started with the backend.

For the first time, I tried a new way to develop my server-side.

It is TTD

Test-driven development, you write the test, you test the test, then you write the code,

It took less then I blink of the eye to realize how much better and easy to read was the code I was writing.

This will save me lot's of time when I will need to update something.

Between the front and the control panel, there are more than 100 tests to ensure that this website is always under control.

What's now

As I said this is my laboratory, there will always be experiments, and new stuffs to come.

In the meantime, please read my post and leave a message if you'd like.