My Web Development Recap for 2008

This post is coming in a few days later than I had originally hoped, but that's okay. 2008 was a very busy and successful time for me in regards to my personal work online, and I wanted to take a moment or two and recap some of the highlights and numbers.

Four New Sites!!!

With the launch of my largest site, Ka'anapali Dreamin' back in 2007, I would have figured the majority of my time the following year would have been spent with upkeep and expansion of that site. Indeed, I put quite a bit of time into it, with close to 20 updates released last year, not to mention all the new content around our April '08 trip to Maui.

But who knew I'd also be serving up 4 new websites in that same year, bringing the total of sites in my portfolio to 9. Here's a quick recap of each of them.

• Maui Wall Candy - This is my online photo store powered by smugmug. While the Pro account that I'm subscribing to handles most everything for me, there was still a bit of customization to get the site looking unique, and it was anything but the traditional coding and markup process, either.
  View Site - View Announcement
• photonelly.com - This site is my portfolio site for my photography work, much like webnelly.com is the portfolio site for my web development. It was one of those that I decided to throw together in a matter of a few weeks and have been very happy with it.
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• kris.nelson - Shortly before completing photonelly.com, I came up with the concept for kris.nelson and literally launched the site in 3 days. It's not a traditional website and bends a few of the standard site design rules, but I think it's a neat little place to visit
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• Igloo Surfing - This little blog should have been the first site in 2008, but was put on the back burner almost the entire year. It's a small blog featuring photos of our rabbits doing cute things and my attempted humor with captions.
  View Site - View Announcement

While I have some site redesign and enhancement ideas for my existing sites, there are no plans for new sites (yet) in 2009.

Blogging

By the end of 2008, blogging finally became part of my daily routine, and I was very proud of myself. Setting small goes to start with, I finished the year with well over 200 posts on my four blogs, and in December I was averaging 2 a day.  Here's the breakdown:

• Ka'anapali Dreamin' Blog - 136 posts
• Kris and Cindy's Blog - 42 posts
• webnelly.com Blog - 28 posts
• photonelly.com Blog - 26 posts

Photos

With the launch of my photonelly.com site last year, photography, much like blogging, became a regular part of my life as well. As a result of our April '08 trip to Maui and my renewed interests in everyday photography, I posted 1,900 new photos to Flickr in 2008.  Checking the 2008 Archive calendar at Flickr, the biggest spike in April from our Maui trip, but the last 3 months really started to pick up in terms of frequency.

Twitter

It addition to making Twitter part of my Maui vacation in 2008, I've become a modest use of the micro-blogging service during the second half of '08. I recently posted my 1,000 update on Twitter before the end of the year, and while I only have a handful of followers, it makes a nice balance. My Twitter updates are already integrated into kris.nelson, and I have a few ideas on future uses as well. Fun stuff.

Pretty Much It

That about covers the major highlights. There were so many cool things that worked on this past year, it would just be too daunting to list most of the smaller ones. The new sites are always fun, but the blogging, photos, and Twitter conversations I engage in daily are really what is making it exciting to share my life online right now. The web is such a great place right now, and I'm happy to be a part of it.

Here's to bigger and better things in 2009!

Maui Wall Candy Now Online

After about a month of site customization and photo processing, Maui Wall Candy is now officially online. Maui Wall Candy is an online photo store where you can view and purchase photos that I have taken on our different visits to Maui. You can browse through the different galleries to find photos of magnificent sunsets, stunning vistas, great beaches and more.

And I've really only started and have about 2,000 photos yet to review from this past trip back in April. I've added a Coming Soon page to highlight some of the new photos and galleries I'm working on. To make it easier, there is a Recent Photos Feed that you can subscribe to and check out the latest photos when they're added.

The site is hosted using a SmugMug Pro Account, which means it's part of the bigger SmugMug collection of photographers and photo galleries. It's a bit of a change for me after my years using Flickr, but the site really wouldn't be possible without SmugMug.

So if you love Maui or just want to check it out, head on over and start browsing. If you're interested in buying something, you can check out the different formats and pricing available on the Pricing page. Not only can you buy full sized prints, there are also digital options available, too. Why digital? Check out the Photo Ideas page to find out.

Thanks, and happy viewing.


P.S.: Looking for more details on Maui? Don't forget to check out my Ka'anapali Dreamin' site, too. :)

New Photo Store Coming

After being inspired, yet again, by another trip to Maui this past April, I'm in the process of putting up my first eCommerce site that will sell both prints and digital downloads of my many Maui photos.

The site design is still in progress, but many of the details are actually already handled for me. How? I'm planning on signing up for a SmugMug Pro account that once configured, will handle everything from the credit card processing and fulfillment, to the printing, customer service, you name it. That leaves me to pick which photos I want to sell, clean them up and adjust them for printing, and then upload to their servers. Pretty neat.

This is giving me the chance to really focus on the site design as the main effort, since they even give you the templates and page markup for the galleries as well.

More details in the coming weeks.