2021 Update: I’ve since re-done the site again, when I get a chance I’ll write something up on it. The post below refers to an older design.
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Another redesign, this time a good one, I swear! I decided to learn ReactJS, and for my first project I redesigned my photography website, patrickgillespie.com
My previous design was pretty bad, I guess no one had the heart to tell me. For this new one I studied several other designs and took elements I thought worked best. It’s simple, responsive, and the code is up on github if anyone is looking for a portfolio template.
patrickgillespie.com had been pretty dead for about a year, receiving an average of 2-3 visitors a week, probably bots. The domain was about to expire earlier this month, when I noticed a big uptick in visitors leading up to the expiration day (~20 a day). Were these other Patrick Gillespies eyeing the domain? Domain vultures looking to scoop up a site that was about to fall into the abyss? I guess I’ll never know.
patorjk.com, on the other hand, has been alive and kicking, at least visitor wise. No one reads this blog, but the apps on the site see hundreds or thousands of visitors a day, making me feel sort of bad about neglecting the site. It’s like a rudderless ship that has somehow managed to successfully sail the ocean.
Anyway, if you’re reading this, I hope you enjoy the new portfolio site or at least find some use in the code. The most useful piece of it is probably the create-image.js script, which creates multiple sizes of a photo and extracts it’s exif data into a JavaScript object which the application can use.
Hey man I’m kinda weird so I’m gonna try to not be weird. When I was like 9 years old (1997) I used to follow your old page and I never did get good at programming. I had fine the AOL stuff but was def a script kiddie. Though I dabbled and made a few fun projects. You were a big inspiration back in the day and I visited your site like daily. Though I didn’t become good at programming I did grow fond of tech, and I get to use some really cool tech these days. I’m an air traffic controller using a radar system every day. I feel like somewhere down the line you had a part in that. So, thanks. Hope all is well my dude.
I was going through my blog’s spam filter when I found this. This is a very delayed reply, but I just want to say thank you for the comment, it definitely put a smile on my face. I’m glad I had an positive impact on you and thanks for checking in :)!
your creation with javascript is super, i really like