Sunday (07/24/05)
My First Offical Post In Which I Tell You About The New Site 2:52 pm
Well, first off welcome to elliotswan.com. And second off, I encourage you to bookmark this site (or even subscribe to my RSS feed), and keep on comin’ back. There should (hopefully) be lots of good content.
As my first official post, I’ve decided to give a list of “whys” about the new site and design, including why it doesn’t validate.
Why I used WordPress
To be honest, I picked it because it was easy to install and it looked like a fairly good piece of software. Now that I’ve been using it, I’m pretty impressed. Very nice to theme.
The Colors
Over at MorgueFile I found this awesome photo by Zach Carter of a door with a 3 painted on it, so I had to use it. I put it in my header, and most of the colors came from it as well.
I had used pink on my last blog, and actually put up quite a fight for it. I remember having comments posted on it such as this:
It’s…like…PINK…o_0
But seriously, I didn’t overdo it at all, just some accents…So anyways, I eventually won that battle, and I just had to keep it in this new design.
WHAT??!! IT DOESN’T VALIDATE!!11!!
Nope. And the basic reason for it can be spelled out in two letters:
IE.
But for a more detailed explanation:
Standards and validation were made for a reason, and that reason wasn’t bragging rights. It was to create accessable, cross-browser sites. Most of the standards were well thought out, but Microsoft, of course, didn’t want to follow them and along came IE. Things like transparency can’t be done on IE using standard code (as it can on more newer browsers), but Microsoft does recognize non-standard code to do the same thing. Then why not use it? To follow the book of validation but not the idea just plain doesn’t make sense.
Don’t get me wrong, I put this site through the validator several times. The validator is a good tool, but it is nothing more than exactly that–a tool. It’s not a designer, it’s not a developer, and it doesn’t know what you are trying to achieve.
Follow the rules of validation, and you can have a pretty good site. Follow the ideas of validation, and you’ll have an even better one.
If you want to read more about it, click the button over on the sidebar or read Mike Davidson’s post on it.
Well that’s all for now.
I eat food. I listen to music. I sleep. Sometimes. I drink lots of coffee. I make pretty pictures. I talk to people. I believe in things. I write stuff. I take photographs. I have a laughing addiction. I am human. 
Sweet first comment w00t
All right! Good move. I love the look and the colors. I totally agree with you on the whole validation thing. My last project I just gave in to peer pressure.
I love the layout!
Pink…. well..
Just not my colors 
MSN I NIIPET
MSN
Your site, your work, your words are great!
Just curious: What do you think of SquareSpaces (http://squarespace.com/)? How does it compare to Wordpress? I guess it’s less simple (more pro).
Keep up the good work!
Grr. That spam comment made it to my inbox. Oh, and BTW now that you are redesigning this site, what’s up with pink? Just curious [I expect no answer from you]
Have a good day.
Oh, was that comment I talked about before really spam? If not, I’m sorry to have called it like that. It’s just that for me it seems like having that kind of structure [i.e. words I don’t understand, with links to web pages]. Probably if I learn that language I would have understood. I’m an ignorant.
“He who knows that he knows nothing, he knows something”.
Elliot: and does your site validates now? Just curious [again]. =)
Pretty sure it was spam.
As for the pink, forgot about that…I’ll have to put that in somewhere. And as to validation, I honestly don’t know–I didn’t bother checking. Unless it’s causing crazy bugs or accessibility issues, it’s not really one of my top concerns.