Got the first draft of the homepage comps from the designer this morning – looks great! I asked him for a number of tweaks and will hopefully be getting the second round tomorrow. I actually asked for two designs, one centered around text and the other more image-heavy – we’ll see what he comes up with.

I have looked some more at Drupal and Joomla and have decided that Drupal has serious potential for the handweaving resource site. It has customizable fields (which will allow me to do the project repository without much trouble) and an add-on module called “organic groups” which will enable people to create their own groups and have forums only visible to that group. I’m still exploring what else it can do, but I’m pretty certain it’s the right choice for the resource site, I just have to figure out how. Fortunately this dovetails nicely with my desire to understand CMS’s (content management systems) for work.

I just bought another used ultralight notebook from eBay, this one with 2 GB RAM and 2GHz processor. This will let me run Adobe’s Creative Suite 3, something I’ve wanted to do for awhile. Yesterday I stripped it down and reinstalled the operating system (just in case the previous owner left any spyware), this morning I installed the missing device drivers, and tonight I’m going to embark on the marvelous adventure of reinstalling the 10,000 programs I had installed on my old laptop. Creative Suite 3 promises to be a real treat – took over two hours and heaven only knows how many reboots to install it on my desktop and get it updated, but I did eventually get it done.

Anyway, if you don’t hear from me for a couple of days, it’s because I’m busy with configuring my new -to-me laptop. Although, I will probably post a screenshot of my new homepage once it’s ready.

I went out today looking for a book on Drupal (which is a content management system that I’m considering using for my website) and found a book on web design which intrigued me.  I’m now torn between paying someone else to do the design on my site and doing it myself.  I’m still leaning towards having a designer do it, despite the fact that (with this book’s help) I think I might actually be able to do a halfway decent design.  Mostly it’s that I want to learn about building websites, not designing in Photoshop – while the latter might be interesting, and would help me master Photoshop, there is too much on my plate to learn already.  So I think I will leave the designing aspect to someone else and concentrate on implementation.

I am now ready to thread up the loom and will probably start later today or tomorrow, after I’ve finished jamming my brain with information about Drupal and web design.

I’ve definitely decided to redesign my website, and have gotten in touch with a couple of Web designers to discuss getting help with the graphic design.  The idea is for them to generate a Photoshop layout for me to work from, and for me to do the actual implementation.  This will give me a chance to learn about Web design, and I can get support from my Web development team along the way.  Thus allowing me to restructure my website (which badly needs reorganization) while pursuing my professional goals.  Would that all my hobbies dovetailed so nicely!

Anyway, I have asked for information from 2-3 graphic designers, and will be picking someone shortly.  If you know someone cheap and creative, can you point me in their direction?  I can’t afford a great deal, but I would like to get ideas and templates/components for me to work with.