Late at night on December 16th I launched the new version of Dashron.com. This new version is a full redesign and a rewrite. The site was in desperate need of an update.

Code Organization

The previous version of dashron.com used roads-starter to help with code organization. roads-starter was a library that offered objects to help organize code and reduce duplication. roads-starter wasn’t cutting it for my larger side projects so I rewrote it to use code generation. I believe the new technique will be more maintainable.

CSS Framework

I am not a designer, and have not spent time improving those skills. For the redesign I wanted to build on the experience of stronger designers, so I selected the bulma css framework. I’ve been happy with bulma and will continue using it for future projects.

Authoring

The old site never had a good authoring flow. Behind the scenes I had one big text box that accepted markdown. This was limiting, not very inviting, and thus a barrier to creating content. The new site has no API or database. It consumes the WordPress API which allows me to author everything using the excellent WordPress editor.

You’ll also notice a new top navigation. In this new navigation is a series of topics I invest my time in. I will be writing about all these topics, and am excited to get back into creating content.