A while back, at the beginning of this year I was working on an online directory for orbportals.com, not a web design site.
Now I never managed to finish it from lack of interest, frustrations outside of work, and such I just moved focused from it as the main site to a sub-site. And in that, the directory found purpose. After several renovations I still found myself unable to work on the site from a lack of interest.
But really, the lack of interest was spawned by frustrations I developed from working on that site. Certain things didn’t work the way I wanted them to and I couldn’t bypass those simple issues.
Until I went back and brought focus.
In the review of the OrlandoODP site, I realized I strayed from the original design for the site.
So I draw out a sheet of paper and wrote out what I was doing.
- To Convince: Orlando Residents and Tourist
- To Use: OrlandoODP as a means to connect with businesses and resources and events in central Florida
- Instead of: Other Florida directories and guides
- Because: I provide a clean, fast, and informative guide to online businesses and resources in central Florida without ads, clutter, and poorly considered designs
that is, by the way a nice little task-management trick I learned from Greg Storey’s article on a list apart.
So with a mission statement in hand, I set out to address and fix the problems with the site starting with the design. The design of the site had changed from wide column to narrow column to whatever. The last design I created for it was a blue and tan design which wasn’t very good at all. So I dropped the blue for a nice green-gel effect and created a black bar for the search area to sit in and then the rest of the site was replaced with a silver-to-white gradient background. I didn’t change the header, except to move it up and I added a new footer that fell in line with orbportals.com.
My next step was to fix up the actual content of the site, and like many directories, that meant dealing with link-rot. It also meant dealing with quick and dirty descriptions and moving sites to the correct categories.
From here on out, the directory is gonna be a huge project, but I’ve set a reasonable goal for myself on it.
10 links a week, new links.
So I suggest if you’re in orlando, you better add your site!
