Yes, I know it looks the same as the dull old website, but believe me, it’s pretty shiny! And the benefits are going to be easier and faster updates, more ways to find stuff, and ultimately more stuff to find!
The improvements I’ve made include:
- Automating much of the work related to putting up a new piece, including automatically adding in SoundCloud players in both the works list (mini Flash player) and the page for the new piece (HTML5 player)
- Categorising pieces so that, say, from one piece for flute you can easily jump to a list showing all the other pieces that have a flute in them, or to a list of all solo or chamber pieces, giving you new ways to discover pieces that may have escaped your notice before
- A new Projects section (under Music) which lists current projects, along with blog posts pertaining to them, and the details of significant past projects such as Lucky Dip and On Harrowdown Hill
- A new page listing some of my other writing about music, including articles, other website content and even a published book!
So I hope you enjoy the new site – please let me know if anything you expected to be there has gone missing, or if you see something else amiss. Or for that matter, if there’s something you’d like to see in there that hasn’t been there before!
A shameless plug: If you’re interested in getting a shiny new easy-to-maintain website of your own, why not hop on over to Raspberry Blue Ltd, my freelance company and see how I might be able to help you out 🙂
For the geeks, who may be interested in what I actually changed, what I’ve done here is to convert the site from its former hybrid PHP/WordPress existence into a 100% WordPress implementation. The design has also been converted so that it is responsive (although I’ve yet to create and implement an alternative design for mobile devices – that’s on the list). Even shinier, I’ve set up WP so that the URL for every page in the site matches the one I used to promote the old page, to minimise the chance of broken links.