I began ‘doing web stuff’ in 1998, initially in relation to teaching. As I became more conversant with HTML etc. I found that hyperlinks and some well laid out navigation provided me with a way of assimilating a lot of the info I would like to hang on to that otherwise gets lost or forgotten or just can’t be found. WordPress, when it came along, made the coding, navigation and editing parts easy.
My basic guide in creating a website is that it be ‘useful and EZ to use’ for me and then I figure it should work for others.
I am not very imaginative when it comes to site design, but I do use images a lot to make a page attractive, break up text etc.
I have put a lot of effort into design for only two websites, one in 1999 – Dalhousie Collection of Cacti and Other Succulents. Aprile Scwartz, who provided a lot of the content had a lot to do with the colour combinations and overall layout. That site was all hand-coded.
In 2007, I created a website for the Nova Scotia Wildflora Society; design-wise, it was fairly similar to the cacti site, but I made use of a stylesheet/template by Andreas Viklund.
I first made use of WordPress in 2009, when I created a new website for the Halifax Field Naturalists. In that and all subsequent websites I made, I stuck with an Andreas Viklund stylesheet/template for WordPress that replicated the features on the earlier NS Wild Flora website; now that stylesheet/template is maintained by WordPress as “Twenty Ten”.