Welcome to 2.0
So here’s how it all started. As summer 2010 ended, I was approaching my 60th birthday. I visited a bookstore and bought a couple of beginner’s books on how to build a website. I had only read a couple of chapters when I decided to build my own site from scratch. Rather than using the simple “Try It Yourself” exercises contained in the book, I settled on working with my own material. And after just a couple of weeks of html coding, DrDosido.net was born. It worked. It did what I wanted it to do. It had a certain character of its own: part naivete, part passion. But it was also clunky, with a chronic irrationality to boot. DrDosido.net 1.0 showed why good design requires a complete and consistent plan as the first step.
1.0 was launched on October 4, 2010 with 30 recordings for users to browse. Through the first fifteen months I frequently uploaded new additions, and by 2012, there were nearly 350 recordings scattered throughout half of the sites 45 pages. Then life served up several screwballs and I left the site (and this blog) alone for a long stretch while attending to other matters.
As 2013 raced through its final week, I impulsively decided that it was time to upgrade to version 2.0. My coding chops long dormant, I downloaded several website templates from the ‘Net, and settled on a common design on the grounds that it must be tried and true. But it didn’t do what I wanted it to do, so I began taking it apart piece by piece. I had to learn CSS (cascading style sheets) in the process, which allowed me to simplify and rationalize the infrastructure of my website. CSS is a bit tricky for the uninitiated. And most of the advice found through google searches is either too opaque (assuming too much on the part of the seeker) or too obvious. The rest of it is downright contradictory.
But I soldiered on, and after several complete rebuilds, DrDosido.net 2.0 was launched on January 20, 2014.
What’s new about 2.0? It looks a little sharper. The navigational menus and links are laid out consistently. The pathways through the site unfold with greater clarity. I have presented more basic data along each pathway and have built at least one browsing page at the end of each path, on which recordings will be shared. All but one of the twelve paths now contains sound files for you to listen to. And the framework is in place for me to upload many more of the recordings I intend to share.
The Accomplishments of DrDosido.net 1.0 are the starting point for version 2.0. Here are some numbers to tell part of the story:
DrDosido.net 1.0 (as of January 2012)
| Path | Tunes | Total Pages | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indiana Hoedown | 46 | 8 | |
| Adler House | 60 | 11 | |
| Old Town School | 35 | 4 | |
| Tune Catcher | 186 | 14 | |
| Reflections | 0 | 4 | |
| Site | 327* | 45 |
The new remake starts out with the same number* of recordings. Each pathway now has its own explanatory landing pages, artist and project rosters, browsing pages, and pages for additional notes. More numbers:
DrDosido.net 2.0 (as of January 2014)
| Path | Rosters | Browsing | Total Pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indiana Hoedown | 3 | 3 | 9 |
| Adler House | 3 | 5 | 14 |
| Old Town School | 3 | 3 | 8 |
| Tune Catcher | 6 | 12 | 22 |
| Reflections | 0 | 5 | 7 |
| Site | 15 | 26 | 66 |
That brings us to a grand total of 66 pages in the new version of DrDosido.net. Plus there are now two blogs hosted on the site. In the next post, I’ll provide a guided tour.
* 327 is the correct number, counting links to YouTube. The number 348 reported elsewhere is wrong.