I believe it was the Getting Real PDF book from 37Signals that mentioned designing for 3 states; or, as they like to call it, the “Three State Solution.” It’s funny, because I fell right into the predictions they made. I totally ignored the blank view. I pumped this site up with data while designing, just to make sure everything would fit nicely, but I never really thought about the first impression the site gives when there is only one post, one category, two tags and no comments. It’s quite bland. I find myself wanting to shove some more stuff in the database in order to “bulk up” the site a little more.

This design was so sparatic, though. I never really gave it my complete attention. Had this been a project for work, or perhaps something more than my own site (where there were users and the users had accounts), I would have been more prone to think about all facets of the design (including the blank view).

All in all, I don’t know what I would have done differently had I remembered the blank view, but it’s an interesting thought.

I’ve had this site ready to deploy since Wednesday/Thursday last week, but have been unable to do so because of the issues I’ve been having with my server. Actually, the site itself has been done for a long time, but I wanted to touch up a few things, and never got around to it until last week. So, once I was back into the swing of things, I wanted to get it uploaded by the end of the day on Thursday. Being the good worker that I am, I tried to do it over lunch, and had no luck.

Initially, it worked. But I had my password wrong for the database, so it crashed out on me. I changed that, restarted my processes, refreshed the browser… nothing. It made it to the 120 second mark when FastCGI times out. I thought, ok, must be something going on with Dreamhost. I tried again later, still didn’t work. It’s now time to hit the forums/blogs/wiki’s and so on. I even emailed Dreamhost support about the issue (they didn’t help).

To make a long story short, I tried everything under the sun. I was surprised that I found at least 10 different solutions to the EXACT same problem I was having, the only difference was none of them worked for me. Eventually, I gave up on fixing it, and followed Chris’ path. Everything works, but don’t be surprised if something is a little screwy (although I’m not sure why it would be).

Here I am… home again. I’m feeling good about the move back to rpheath.com, but I can’t say that it’s not the same feeling I get each and every time I rebuild my site. There are always more things that I want to do, and each time I start those changes, I realize that I’m ready for some new CSS as well, which then leads to a scratch and rebuild. I’m usually not so pattern-like, but I can’t change (or fight off) my urgencies.

I wanted to add del.icio.us and flickr, because I think it will help me keep the site a little longer. There are other things I do online besides post, and that’s part of it. So, indirectly, I’ll do better at maintaining the site by reflecting my other distractions from work.

As far as the design goes, this is my first (almost) white site. In the beginning, I was struggling to find a simple design, which was all that I wanted. Taking some advice from a friend, I did something against what I would normally do: no background, no borders, and limited colors. Then, as time moved on, it started to grow on me. Little touches here and there added just enough color and character to satisfy me. I thought if I left room for improvement, I won’t have to rebuild the site, I’ll be able to improve/change the design up a little bit. There’s nothing like leaving room than going all white. The point is, I’m happy now, but don’t be surprised when I mix it up a little, and bring some color back.

In conclusion to my 10th intro post, I hope to update this site a lot more than the last few. As always (for me), having a site that I like to visit, gives me that extra motivation to post. Soon I’ll be able to add a small portfolio of all this crapola. But that doesn’t rank very high on my list.