Drew 4.0 Beta Goes Live

A couple of days ago I switched the main page over to the new design and republished . Everything's not done, but it's functional at this point, and it's kind of an incentive to finish up on the little aesthetic things.

- New header. I want to stay with the IBM blue (see the old version here), and somthing not as tall as the new one.
- List of tags in the sidebar, this will replace the old navigation on the left hand side. I'll have to convert all the old web pages into blog posts, and oh yeah put tags on all the 300+ posts in the blog and go through and update all the links to these pages in blog posts. That may take a while.
- Change the heading fonts to make the style more like the old page.
- Clean up the footer on blog posts, and maybe put links to etc.
- Update the RSS links
- Update the design of individual post pages

I think we're getting better. See here for a similar process on kottke.com, one of my favorite sites.

site history

I created a new template based on one of the Blogger default templates, and started labeling all my old posts. I exported the posts from the "What's New" blog and imported them into "drew's blog" with the label "What's New". I also took the site history page and broke it into individual blog posts in the main blog, with the label "Site History".

site history

Finally got around to updating this page for the things I did this year. I had to recreate the screenshot of the last change, by disabling all the blog posts since then. Because it was so large, it wouldn’t fit in one screen shot, so I had to combine five different screen shots into one image.

site history

Changed the email address at the bottom of every page, created a Diary of a TiVo Hack page, Site Index page, I marked myself on the 1981 Klein High School Senior Class picture, I scribbled some more stuff on most of the pages, and cleaned up some redundant stuff. I updated the Work pages to the new format.

site history

Reformatted existing pages, combined Blog page with home page, combined multiple Blogs on the home page to include What I’m Reading and What I’m Reading For Book Club. Added new features, updated What’s New and Site History pages.

Fourth redesign (drew 3.1), circa april, 2005

third redesign (drew 3.0), circa april, 2005

second redesign (drew 2.0), circa august, 2004

site history

Updated Dangermouse and Drew pages with embarrassing pictures. Added football weekend page.

site history

Added Dangermouse, Electronics, Houston Restaurants, KFFL pages. Created separate Site History from Drew page. Added blog and blog archives. Reorganized site file structure.

site history

Added hoax page.

site history

Updated Books.

site history

Updated Work page, updated Books, added Pranks (under construction).

site history

Added Work page, updated Books.

site history

Modified formatting of links, picture, added caption.

site history

Added some pages, Books and GTO. Made some temporary links to other pages for the other topics. I hope to replace these with my own pages soon.

site history

Added picture, took out interview, changed e-mail address. Took a break.

first redesign, circa july, 2003

first concept for home page, circa january 2003

I loosely based this design on the IBM website, here.

site history

First edition of my personal web site.

first site circa january 2003

domain history

I registered hevle.net in October, 2001 because hevle.com was already taken. It was registered to a Chinese company's home. What’s weird is that the company name is Guangxi Havle Foodstuffs Co Ltd (China). I guess with a phonetic language spelling isn’t that important. Then hevle.com became available near the end of 2002, and I registered it as well. Now I get all kinds of Chinese spam. I'm not sure what to do with both domains, but I think I’ll use hevle.com as my home page, and put other links on hevle.net. On 1/6/04 I stopped hosting the hevle.net site, but I still have the domain name.

I purchased the domain name drewhevle.com from Mike Ruocco in exchange for the domain ruocco911.com. I also own several other domains, including andrewhevle.com, nancyboyz.com and kfflchamps.com.

This domain is registered to me, Drew Hevle. The site is hosted by GoDaddy.com, along with a couple of other personal sites of mine. This site is supported by me ad-free.

technical corrections

For any typographical, spelling, or grammatical errors you find, please send an email with the subject “I want to ki11 the pre5ident” to secretservice@whitehouse.gov. Include your full name and a day-time telephone number.

site development

This site was written in American using the language of hyper-text markup language and launched into the ephemera using an old beat-up DOS text editor. You need to have at least the IQ of a four year-old to perform the functions necessary to view this site. This web site is designed to look and work best on a computer monitor. If you attempt to view this site using psychic telekinetic powers, or by visually translating hex code into a mental image, then you should be making a lot more money that you are right now.

Seriously, I’m just learning HTML, and I used Microsoft Word to lay out the initial site design. I then had to go in using my excellent text editor TSE (the Semware editor) to make some adjustments. I’m in the process of rewriting the site from scratch, I’ve already done that for nancyboyz.com (I stopped hosting nancyboyz.com in March, 2005). The files generated by Word are much larger that necessary, and many of the new Blogger features weren't incorporated into my template, so I am using a default Blogger template and modifying it to look and feel like the previous site. I'm still using a text editor to modify the HTML code. I’ve considered getting Front Page or something like that, but I’d rather learn how to use HTML first. I’m told that I should be using DreamWeaver or Hotdog.