My Site is Dead. Long Live My Site.

I thought it would take a couple of months. At most. Figure out what I wanted to see, learn what I needed to learn in order to do what I needed to do, then do it. Easy. Instead, the pitiless old rule once again proved true:

However long you think a major project is going to take, multiply your estimate by a factor of 1.5.

After three months of work, then, primary construction of this all-new site is complete. Still a few tweaks and refinements to come. But all the big rocks are in place.

A quick recap: My old site was increasingly feeling dated to me, in multiple ways. Reworking it in place generated zero enthusiasm.

Contemplating another deep dive into WordPress.

Instead, I opted to let it evaporate and migrate to a new platform and host, something that GoDaddy seemed unable to fathom was intentional, and not some regrettable blunder made because I’d spent several weeks face-down on a beach in Costa Rica, maybe.

I considered hiring a designer to redo the whole thing from scratch, but concluded this was just weakness talking. Because:

• That wouldn’t have allowed for ideas to evolve over time. When you keep changing your mind every few days, you’re the Client From Hell. I don’t want to be the Client From Hell.

• Whatever it is — mountain bike, computer, musical instrument, web site — if you build it yourself, by the time you’re done, you know that motherfucker inside and out. Which serves you infinitely better in the future.

Squarespace it was, then. It has its quirks and limitations, but these can usually be addressed with custom CSS code and plug-ins. I like it. It verges on being fun. Ghastly mistakes are easily reversible, and are usually worked out behind the scenes anyway.

Plus there’s a ton of YouTube videos, for beginners to ninjas, covering whatever you need to know. Credit where due: I relied most heavily on Becca Harpain’s Inside the Square and Chloë Forbes-Kindlen. Superb teachers, the both of them.

Now, to sort out creating a mega menu, to corral all my books into a single drop-down menu instead of three.