This site desperately needs a thorough overhaul.
When I began this site on a
whim in 1999, I never imagined how large it would become,
nor how complex it would become to manage. As a
fledgling webmaster, I knew nothing about site organization
or the design tools that, if implemented at the inception,
would make future maintenance easier. And the content
of the site grew beyond my imagination as I completed the
restoration of Glissando, and afterwards.
Fast forward to today, and
the site you have before you is showing signs of its poor
initial quality and overall age. Over the years, I
have changed the site format several times, and vestiges of
each version still exist on these pages as I've struggled to
integrate and streamline the content here. The basic
content on the pages is still viable and sound, though as
I've grown over the years I find that many of the pages
require significant editing in order for the text to flow
better.
Unfortunately, with
somewhere between 400 and 500 individual pages now on this
site, it's unrealistic to think that I can possibly manage a
thorough redesign and edit within any sort of reasonable
time: I simply don't have the time available.
While I'm sure this bothers me far more than it bothers you,
dear reader, I felt it was important at this stage to lay
out my thoughts regarding this site, its past, and its
future.
In addition to growth as a
webmaster and writer (I think), I've also gained (I hope)
much more repair, restoration, and construction experience
over the years. Inevitably, there are things I did,
which you may read on this site, that I might choose to do
differently now. I would love to install brief
updates to many of the project pages contained herein to
share my thoughts on the original project and how I might
improve things, and perhaps someday this will happen:
but not anytime soon, I'm afraid.
Therefore, I encourage you
to contact me
directly if you're interested in whether I might change how
I did one project or another. The information on this
site is not gospel: there is much room for improvement
in most of the projects, and I'd be happy to share with you
exactly what I feel could be improved.
Updates to this particular
site have slowed dramatically over the years. Why?
Because the project is more or less complete. I still
try to post relevant maintenance and upgrade information as
progress dictates. And most of you are aware of my
other ongoing projects and websites, which get most of my
attention now and which show a newer, more immediate
approach to project documentation.
Enough talk. Allow me
to strip some thoughts down to the basics for you:
- This website is here
for the duration, and I will continue to strive to keep
it fresh, and to improve its appearance and navigation
as much as possible.
- I pledge to try and
edit and reconfigure the pages of this site to improve
readability, to enhance the transfer of the information
within, and to streamline future maintenance and
redesigns so that things don't get stale. For
example, last winter I redesigned the home page and a
few other pages, with the intent of reformatting the
entire site along similar lines; unfortunately, I ran
into some programming bugs that have affected the
operation of some new menus, which in turn restricted
the redesign work I could do (since it made no sense to
include new menus that didn't work properly). I
still hope to straighten this out, but it is obviously
going to take time, and isn't a priority.
- Glissando
is holding up quite well after 6 seasons of use. I
neglected her maintenance a bit during 2006, when I kept
her out of the water while I built our new house, but
she's slowly recovering from that. It was mostly
the brightwork that suffered.
- While there is nothing
major required for the boat, she's starting to look a
bit worn, and to my eye requires some cosmetic work.
As soon as shop space allows, I plan to pursue a
mini-refit that will include varnish work and hull
paint. She still looks good, but needs time
indoors. After all, she hasn't been indoors since
2003. It's also time to thoroughly go over all her
systems and check everything over.
- I would definitely
approach a few things differently if I were to do this
project again from scratch. These are mostly
evolutionary or incremental changes, but nonetheless you
should never take the information in this site to be the
last word. I'd be happy to tell you more
specifically what I might change, but for the reasons
breathlessly described above, the improvements are not
necessarily going to show up on these pages on their
own. Feel free to
ask about any
specific project and what I might change. I might
be my own harshest critic and won't be shy about telling
you what I'd do differently--or, conversely, if
I'd do it the same way, and why.
There you have it:
some of the thoughts I've been harboring within for some
time now. I promise nothing with this site, other than
the fact that I'm still here, still hard at work on many
related things, and always open to your questions or
comments about this site, boats in general, and so on.
Congratulations if you made it to the end of this
self-indulgent tome: you must be a dedicated reader.
Thanks.
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