The site is still under construction. This article is still a draft.

Great news! The website, ProperProgramming.com has reached version BETA! Its been way to long. We’ve been doing this how long? And yes, it never will be “done” as we are going to start utilizing the platform. I still see problems with it, but I can be quite picky.

I wanted this site as an example. I needed something that was all mine. No per-made theme (templates) would do what I wanted. I had to design everything from the most basic beginnings. I wanted it bright, brilliant and unique. Something to show to my future clients what I’m capable of. Something that wasn’t what I see everywhere else. I think I’ve found success.

Yes, this site isn’t done. It never will be. I’ve been growing and building it for awhile and will continue to do so. It’s been a long journey, as my requirements had to exceed all of my previous clients expectations.

A completely custom, original website that is completely responsive. And focus on accessibly, SEO and performance was paramount. The result is what I wanted.

I started with the bare necessities. WordPress and a publicly available Bootstrap starter template. My goal was to showcase my skills and provide an example of what’s possible. The plan was to create something different that was also fast, easy on the eyes, warm and welcoming.

First, I needed a hosting company. There was a few choices, but I ultimately turned to SiteGround to provide a reasonably costing service while giving me a managed platform that could cut my maintenance cost.

I choose WordPress for the same reason I offer it as a product to my clients. It’s fast, easy to deploy, secure, and easy to support. Of course, it’s easy to always find a WordPress expert to support it.

The disadvantage of this tech stack comes in the form of CSS and JavaScript loading on pages it may not be used on. “Unused CSS” is the common industrial term. It slows our first impression, but may improve sequential page views. It was clear, in this case, the benefits of using frameworks greatly outweigh the negatives. We could also solve this problem through optimizations.

Making these choices is not easy. Many professionals are unaware of these concepts. After all, many massive corporations don’t provide this level of quality. Thus I decided to focus on optimizations on the top landing pages, while balancing a few more universal resources given our growing potential. After all, I knew I could manually make optimizations as needed.

Colors

Why did you choose these colors?

I chose an eccentric color scheme to stand out from our competitors and give our visitors something a bit different then the normal. A darker background is certainly easier on the eyes for us that are in front of a computer all day long. The more I worked with it, the more I loved it. I knew it was a match. The site is here to stand out.

Color Palette

Purples

#9c83aa

#53455b

Gradients – Banner

Oranges

#eb495d

#ee736

Gradients – Buttons

Green

#00bc8c – Links

I had stumbled on the color scheme by mistake. Though the results quickly captured my heart. It’s spicy, yet also warm and inviting. It has certainly captured my imagination.

Fonts

Next, focus had to be paid to the fonts. Each one needed to portray the feelings we wanted, their spacing, sizing and other features had to be adjusted to meet their needs.

Lato – A commanding font that is great for giving a sense of authority.

Civita – A font that is easy to read, yet stylish and traditional.

Site Content

The next challenge was to create the text I’d use to sell my services. I’d researched various competitors for inspiration, and slowly worked towards something original and also hit the SEO keywords I wanted. I had researched how to write a call to action, and started incorporating what I learned into a document.

It took many generations to get the text perfect. The need for the right emotions is essential.

Fine Tuning

Bugs, bugs everywhere! Combinations easily create the issue we face. Mobile, tablet and desktops got to look great. Safari, Firefox, Chrome and Edge need to look great. Every device had to show the best we have. Granted, even our competition had not been so exhaustive as I had to be.

Most sites don’t need perfection. This was to be an example. Our requirements for a MVP was higher than most. No excuses were in order. The cost of perfection can be extensive, and it always ends in failure, but we had to get close!

My tests would often reveal the difference combinations of different browsers and different sizes. Fixes often broke other devices, pages or other browsers. Trial and error got the right combination and experience ensured this impact was minimum.

Eventually I got to where you see things now. I’m proud and love what I came up with and hope you enjoy the site! Please, let me know if new browsers develop problems

Things to do:

Gut the home page, and create a bunch of service individual landing pages. A bit more fine tuning on some displays.

Revisions

April 8th, 2020 – Added some more animation’s and have further refined the performance and other aspects. Significant improvements in the polished was made with bug fixes. We got more work in Performance and Content left.

April 12th, 2020 – Added Color Palette, Fonts with some more minor improvements and editing.