The motivation
I finally decided now is the time to roll up my sleeves and do this thing myself. ThisĀ āthingā means customizing a WordPress theme to allow for better responsive design of my blog, and better UI for reader experience and better ways to monetizing. So many reasons to work on my blog website as a web developer and not just the fashion content creator.
Screenshots of my blog currently (desktop and mobile views):
For my career development
Iām a proud engineer, and what do engineers do? They build things themselves. I thought about the idea of outsourcing this to a contractor to do this job so I can use my time focusing on creating the fashion content. However, for several reasons I talked myself against it. One, a project like this is not cheap if outsourced, and my blog is not bringing in that kind of income yet to justify the expense. Second, this would be a great way for me to build up my profile as a developer and give me an opportunity to work on a side project. Third, in the future when I need support or tweaks to the design, itās additional expenses. So why not just do it myself and fix it myself?
For a fully customizable blog design
WordPress is great. It makes it relatively easy to control my blog content. It also allows many plugins to customize your blog. But with my knowledge in UI, I donāt want to stop there.
Mobile first, desktop second.Ā
Even though the mobile version of my blog is not entirely terrible, itās still lacking some features Iād like to have. For example there is not a way to hide the popup asking readers to like my Facebook page. This could be annoying to fans who have already liked my FB and this popup is covering almost half of their screen, preventing them from seeing my actual blog underneath it. If Iām going to attract my Instagram followers to my website, how am I going to do that if my site looks like crap on a mobile device (where most of Instagram users are)?
Responsive design
We no longer live in the tech world where a well designed website is just static text and images. If you have been on websites where things move around as you scroll, thatās the responsive design Iām talking about. When a reader first visits my page, I want my branding to be the first thing they see. The name of my blog to tell them what website theyāre on, the colors, the theme to present what the blog is all about. Then, as a reader scrolls down my content, the blog header might collapse to a smaller size to make room for the blog posts. What can I do with the empty white spaces on the two sides? Can I utilize that to show case stunning photography of my outfits, or use it to promote my other content? If this design works at all, it will need to work in both desktop and mobile versions
Better shop page
How do I make money from blogging? Affiliation is one part of it. And to attract readers to browse items I pick out, I need a better shop page. I want readers to be able to shop for items by category, by price tag, or by occasion. And I need an easy way for me to add these items as they become trendy. How to make this happen, Iām not sure. But this is something I would like in place.
I know all of this is ambitious and a lot of work for a one person project, considering Iām a mom, have a busy full time job and a fashion blog to keep up. This would technically be my 4th job. Perhaps the next step is for me to assess the scope of all this work, draw a timeline and cherry pick which features I want first. I also see this project as a never ending side work for myself, which isnāt a bad thing. I could always improve the blog more and more. But I could also cap a time limit on the project. But at least these are the reasons behind all this work. This journal is for me document along the way the technical changes behind the website of With Love Lily Rose. So stay tuned!