So how did this whole website thing start? Let me get to the “how” in just a minute. Answering the “when” is a bit easier. All along, I had a thought to abandon my third-party hosted photoblog (since the company had abandoned it's blogging platform and in turn, me) and build something from scratch for myself - something really clean, elegant, and scalable. It was in mid-July when I finally got serious about putting the pieces together. My wife, Gayatri, was a great contribution throughout the process with her input on user experience, design aesthetics, navigation, and website social marketing. Her suggestion to offer canvas prints for purchase in addition to traditional paper prints resulted in two canvas print orders (here and here) in the first two weeks after the service launch.

Below is how this website got shaped up over the last 40 days or so - in pictures.

1. Brainstorming the website structure


2. Designing the page layouts at a local deli place


3. Daily (or nightly) builds of things to-do


4. CSS tweaks. CSS is probably the best thing that has happened to the browser. Well, since the browser itself.


5. And the final product as of 9/1: Complete with a couple of blogs, functionality for buying high quality prints, seamless navigation, tag cloud, RSS feeds and really clean, beautiful pixels all over the place.

I hope you enjoy your time here. Go ahead, take a look around…

Tags: css • coding