Well, I've done it. Websites are a surprising amount of small moving parts and it's been taking me forever to chip away at it, but with enough time even I can get it figured out haha.
I'm writing this as I look over what I've finished so far, which is pretty much every page. There's some file structure reorganization that will need to happen when I upload this to the actual site host, and I'm praying I don't miss any links that end up broken, but I'm feeling mildly... enthusiastic? Excited? Something like that.
I'm like pretty sure I'm too stupid for true web design work, but it's been a satisfying hobby to take the chunks that I learned from my neopets days and gradually turn it into being a functional, clumsily self taught clown making my own pages from scratch. Even if they're enormously simple! I highly recommend getting your own page, haha. It's important to me to have somewhere cross-platform that I can update my commission info, yeah, but also having a dedicated and fully customizable zone for self expression is like... I almost want to say healing. What's that? A creative outlet that doesn't feel like work?? Impossible....
Well, anyway, this is my first journal entry, technically. I wanted to comment on why I did the overhaul. I think having a nice clean """professional""" (lol) topside that's easy to navigate is important since this is technically a work tool lol. The natural thing to do seems to be divide my sites into two, with heavendeluxe.com being front-facing and then some ridiculous url for personal experimentation. However.... hosting is cheap, but not that cheap, and I didn't want to subdivide that much if I could keep things contained -_- plus, having things be easier to stumble upon is nice. Although I create this website for myself, it is, technically, meant to be engaged with.
I had to take some time and save up ideas too, since I wanted to do more than just add an underside: there needed to be new stuff to engage with and explore, to make it more worth checking out. 'MIXPIK' is new and made especially for this update, while 'tic tacs' and 'burning temples' are actually old twine games from when I was in college. I was never deeply invested in making twime games lol.... but it was a fun experiment at the time and I'm glad to still have them.
I've got a few more ideas for additions, but they'll have to wait for me to have free time (and for the ideas to ruminate a bit more, lol).
The 'portalnav' main menu is based very directly off of particle collision data imaging, which was shared in a friend's discord server and proceeded to give me the seed I needed to theme the portal. I was kinda struggling for ideas so it was perfect timing.
The rest of the site was looking a bit plain, until I added the little panzatchi sprite, which I had created for an old illustration. (It's a tamagotchi version of my character, Panzer.) That plus the welcome message tied it together better I think; try refreshing a few times and see if the message changes?
I had other more in-depth computer-y ideas, but felt it was getting a bit distracting. I might go harder on the themeing someday but for now a simplistic layout works for me.
That's all that comes to mind to discuss. What else.... well, someday I'll have comics in here, that sort of thing. Having somewhere I can really build out and curate a gallery makes me feel encouraged to try new little random drawings since I can group them up here (oh god, I'm reinventing the sketchbook).
I'm notoriously shit at managing my own time, but whatever, man. I'll get more up here when I can!