New Site Layout

Update 21/10/23

I went back to the original design. Kept the new features though, which should make adding / updating the site a bit smoother going forward.

New URL

Firstly, you might note that the url of this website has changed, from penborter.com to ben.report. Fewer characters, maybe a bit more anonymous, definitely more fun. The old url will redirect to here from now on. All of the content is the same as before, and the source of the website itself is still available on github. The RSS feed is now available here.

Redesign

I spent the summer break working on a Jekyll theme to eventually convert my website to. The theme is called Stretch––an example is available online. I’ve finally gotten around to moving the existing site over to the new theme. The old version of the website is at: old.ben.report. Below are some before and after screenshots.

Before:

After:

It includes a couple of fun features, like a list.html layout that allows you to easily create landing pages for the collections in your site, or a two-colour scheme that automatically generates all of the site colours from two hex codes. I might update the colours I’ve chosen from time to time, probably moving back towards more neutral choices. For now we’re pairing a very light orange #FFF3EC with a deep teal #237A82.

At the moment, the only Javascript in action on the site is used to swap between dark and light mode. The sidebar is there (instead of nav in the header) because I thought it was more fun for it to be parallel to the main scroll direction. There’s more space for nav elements with this orientation, so you can quickly point visitors to the more interesting parts of the site in the secondary nav, rather than just the main categories. The sidebar also interacts in a more interesting way with the photo galleries, which scroll horizontally.