The Birth Of Another Blog: Marmerm.com
Thursday October 13th 2005
Yes, blogs are a dime a dozen these days. Probably less. I mean, if we're doing the currency conversion, a US dime is only worth 5 British pence to me, so we've already lost some value there. But sometimes from within the thick of the masses juts out a little gem, one that deserves some extra love and will certainly get it. Now sure, my praise is bias: not only did I build this particular site from the ground up, but I also happen to be very *very* fond of its author. Yes, after much ado, Marjan and I have finally finished her own personal site, Marmerm.com.
In promoting the site, I have to say I'm pushing what will surely be a more entertaining read than my own dribble. Her writing is superb, no really, a poetic crafting of imagery and thought-provoking conversation. If you've ever had the pleasure of conversing with her, then surely you're expecting more of the same. Her command of the penned word is even stronger though, which is why it has been particularly painful for us both that the release of this site has taken so long. Her desire to write, and my desire to read her writings, has been burning in us both for a year now. Today we toast champagne in elated relief, as the waiting has finally come to rest...
A bit about what we've built and how: you must appreciate the site as a mix of what our collaborative efforts can produce. While I made an initial design of the site back when I first offered to build her a personal blog, what you see in it's final iteration is far from its beginnings. With Mar as the creative director, we sat side-by-side, for hours at a time, and hand-sculpted each visual element of the site to her liking.
But our teamwork didn't stop at its outer appearance. Much of the content design and behavior is a direct result of Mar's input and ideas. And I have to say, there is nothing quite as valuable as getting thoughts and input from an "everyday" user. It's a notorious curse of web designers (which I sometimes play on t.v.) to be unable to think like a novice web user when we're obviously not. Even with Mar being more advanced than most everyday users, our conversations were often entertaining (if not a bit frustrating at first) as we tried to come at the same question with vastly different ideas and often language. Still, the end result is hopefully evident: a sophisticated site that every user can read and enjoy.
As for the hardcore back-end stuff, that has also been a heck of a lesson for this here programmer. I dug myself elbow-deep into the world of Object Oriented Programming for PHP, building the site out of classes and methods, slapping an in-depth admin interface on top, and in general doing my best to give Mar all the power she needed to be creative without constraint. So she can do nifty things like upload raw jpg files, and they'll be resized to both thumbnails and large images. And you, the faithful reader, can now even take part by leaving comments!
I love the code so much in fact that I'll soon be upgrading this site. Not tomorrow, probably not next week, but sometime. With all of the coursework for school I've already got my plate full, so it'll have to fill in the cracks of free time...
Anyway, enough of this, if you haven't yet done so already, make your way over to Marjan's site and enjoy. Just don't forget to come back here from time to time...