Kelly’s World has been many things over the past few years. It began as a simple site primarily dedicated to showing family and friends the progress of my first house being built in Wylie, Texas. As construction progressed I updated the photos on the site. Shortly after construction was complete and I was laid off from my job at a major telecommunications back-end equipment provider I discovered “Blogger” and KellysWorld Times was born. As the months passed, and as I especially has some serious time to kill, the site began to go through various stages.
The site was born and lived most of its life up until late last year as a creation of FrontPage, although there was increasingly more and more code added from every web source imaginable. It began, much as some earlier websites I had done back in the mid 90’s, with tables and frames, but eventually I found ways to put CSS (‘cascading style sheets’) to use, although I have to admit that even today I don’t really have more than a fundamental understanding of CSS.
For a long time the site laid dormant, seeing changes only when the whim seemed to hit me. Photos always seemed to drive the site more than anything else, both in content and in presentation. Originally I handed coded every page that showed a photo, actually coming up with a clever way to display my favorite photos; but while clever, it was painful to do. Then I began to try some of the photo management sites that were springing up all over the net; finally deciding that SmugMug was the one to stick with, I used it to begin displaying my favorite photos. The adventure in customizing it began and Kelly’s World again laid dormant.
With my engagement Kelly’s World took on a new life and a sister site, EternalMagic. EternalMagic was my first really new site in a long time and turned out to be more of a challenge that I had ever intended. While the results were rather dramatic, given my limited talent, it begged the question of why editing a full fledged website was so difficult. Enter my experience with RapidWeaver and the Macintosh.
In October of last year RapidWeaver came to my attention via the ScreenCastsOnline video cast, a video cast or (video pod cast) about Mac OS X software, tips and tricks. In the episode Don McAlister explained what RapidWeaver was, what it did and how easy it was to use. I was hooked from the moment I saw how powerful this little program was. My first thought was “FrontPage, eat your heart out!” As I was already planing on getting a Mac, I booked-marked the site and just waited for the day that I could made use of the program.
Since then the site has gone through several changes, most cosmetic and operational in nature. You could call it an experiment in progress. Trying different themes, new ideas, displaying photos. Using it I redesigned both Kelly’s World and EternalMagic. EternalMagic was simplified, but made more consistent and in the end more powerful and easier to use. Kelly’s World has gone through aesthetic changes, but not really a major presentation change. Version 3, the most recent set of changes was the first real RapidWeaver implementation of the website. The themes and headers have changed, but the basic content and look hasn’t changed.
While this most recent “evolution” of the site is far from “revolutionary” it is a change in direction. Instead of just being a place to read about my going’s on and looking at photos, old and new, I want this site to be more of an extension of who I am. I want it to be more helpful, especially for so many of my friends and family who really aren’t technologically geared.
KellysWorld Times, now renamed just “Kelly’s World Blog” will continue to give highlights on the life and times of one Kelly M. Spore and family. I would love to say that I will be more consistent in my updates, but honestly we all know how that will turn out. The site will also point out some of my favorite restaurants, stores and all-around good haunts in Dallas and other cities.
This is a family collaboration though, so if you have an idea, a place to recommend,software or hardware you love; let me know and we can add your thoughts or reviews to the site. You can also just point me in the right direction and I can give it a run on my own. Regardless, this site plans on being more active, more useful and more geared towards my family.
I can’t say I will be 100% successful, but now that I have easier tools to work with, all I need is purpose and material. That’s what Kelly’s World is all about. —K. Spore
UPDATE: In June of 2007 the theme for the site was once again updated, although the changes were minimal. Basically a change in color scheme and a pulling back of some of the planned features that never really took off for me. RapidWeaver was also updated to version 3.6, which gave me a few new features to play with. The Blog now has better category management as well as including tags. These new features just make it easier for you to find blog entries you want to read. More changes will undoubtedly occur, but I don’t expect any major changes at least until RapidWeaver 4.0 is released sometime in 2008.
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