In 2000 I developed and launched the first version of the Decent Films Guide. It was a modest collection of some 35 very short capsule reviews presented in hand-coded html of my own design, couched in a highly graphical interface by way of compensation and apology for the relative paucity of content. It was too much site for the content, but at least it inspired me to keep writing.
By September 2001 I had produced quite a bit more content — and had learned a bit more about Web development. I completely rebuilt the site in a more robust format. Since then, I’ve tweaked it here and there, but the basic design remained substantially the same.
Since then, my content continued to grow, and I learned more about Web design… but only enough to know that I didn’t currently have the skills to do what was necessary by myself to take the site to the next level — namely, to upgrade to some sort of dynamic content solution.
For some time now, the necessity of such an upgrade has been as clear, alas, to many readers as it has been to me. In fact, over the years I received many generous offers from readers of varying levels of expertise who were willing to help me rebuild the site, often free of charge, or at reduced rates.
This generosity from so many readers has been extremely gratifying, and I wish here to express my heartfelt gratitude to all who volunteered their time and talent in this way. At the same time, for various reasons, I always declined or at least put off these offers, feeling sure that when the right time and the right offer came along, I would know it.
And then it came. One reader went further than others had done: Simeon, a West Coast developer, wrote to me several weeks ago, not to offer to build a database for my content, but to tell me that he had already done so, and had begun loading my reviews into it, just to be sure it could be done without too much difficulty. He also offered to build me a content management interface using his own blueCMS system. In the end, he said, if I liked the results, I had a new website; if not, no harm, no foul.
Over the next few weeks I worked with Simeon to define the needed functionality as well as the fields and categories needed to manage my data: ratings, genres, cast, content advisory, and so forth. On the front end, I completely redesigned the look and feel of the site, with an eye to making more efficient and flexible use of screen real estate. Simeon then began converting my html/css designs into more elegant css-driven templates, and worked with me to massage and format the data to get the desired results.
Having given such a redesign quite a bit of thought over the years, I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted out of the finished product, and Simeon may not have entirely anticipated how much work was in store for us. Nevertheless, his commitment to make the site and the content management as powerful and as cool as possible is much appreciated.
The new site is so cool, in fact, that I find myself in a certain sense where I was when I first launched the original site over five years ago, with only 35 reviews and a bunch of flashy retro graphics: Once again, it’s too much site for the content.
Clearly, there’s only one thing to do: Keep writing.