Welcome to our new, ground-up redesign of our Landspring 2014 web site. This has been an undertaking talked about for several years, and finally reaching fruition.

This site is based on WordPress, an open-source standard originally designed for blog development.  However, WordPress has grown to be one of the most widely used web development tools; supported by thousands of web developers and creative professionals around the world.  As a result, there are literally hundreds of thousands of templates, tools, and web resources available to use — often free.  It has been a true learning experience to glimpse the enormous capability that can be harnessed by those (unlike myself) who participate in the web community, and are sufficiently proficient to leverage its power.

The site was developed using Google Chrome web browser, a lightweight, fast browser with lots of programmer’s shortcuts incorporated into it.  I’m sure there may be display glitches on other browser platforms or hardware configurations (eg, tablets and smartphones), and making a site robust (“responsive” to the pros) is a never-ending challenge.  If so, I may investigate other themes that are more responsive.

I have deliberately chosen a relatively simple theme (“look”), in order to focus on more interesting functionality such as assembling photo galleries, linking to other web resources, and integrating real-time weather data from our personal weather station.

I am experimenting with incorporating blog posts (like this one), which we hope to add periodically.  Many commercial sites fully integrate blogging into their web marketing efforts, and tightly link their web presence into social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.  While obviously well beyond what we wish to do, occasional posting can help “freshen” the site.  (FYI, the original Landspring web site was last updated in 2008!  You can view the home page of that fossil here.)

So this is still a work-in-process, and some sections have not been fully completed.  In fact, it will never be “done”, as I hope to continue to update and refine it over time.  Web design is a great time killer…

JE