I want to do a little analysis on the replies, as I think they're quite interesting.

Regularity

Here are the results straight from the poll. I had a few replies saying I didn't provide enough options. And of course, if your site is relatively new that probably means you have never redesigned it, so that may have skewed these otherwise necessarily scientific results 😉

As you can see, the highest percentage say they only redesign every three to five years. I was not surprised by this, but the replies I got seemed to indicate that most people, or at least most people who replied, are constantly tweaking the design. So, perhaps this means they only consider it a redesign when it is entirely overhauled.

As a front-end developer and design systems architect, I worked on many large-scale platforms that powered websites across an organization and very rarely was a system entirely overhauled. In fact, the last project I worked on took three years to develop, two-and-a-half years alone to launch. Very often a redesign is simply a light "skin" or the introduction of a major new feature or set of functionality. Would I consider these "tweaks" to the design? Perhaps. I think people must have different definitions for some of these terms.

Reason

And that brings me to the next, and probably most interesting part of the poll: What is the normal impetus to do so? That is, what makes you decide to do a redesign? What factors come together to make that happen?

Incremental

Probably the most common answer, though not provided in so many words. I came up with "incremental" to describe the process of constantly tweaking and making changes, that perhaps over time come to resemble a redesign. As I mentioned above, complete overhauls are time-consuming (and expensive) and we are talking about personal sites and blogs here. People are doing these changes in after-work hours or the weekend (most likely).

Platform change

The second most common answer was a change of platform; moving from one tech stack to another, migrating content but not necessarily migrating styles or design. I think this is also a way to shed some outdated front-end tooling and modernize your front-end. It seems that technologies like Sass might hang around longer if someone was staying with the same platform or workflow.

New knowledge

This might seem obvious, and in contrast to the last reason, new knowledge could mean a platform change or new tooling. It could simply mean stripping out the old and bringing in the new, independent of platform or tooling. Sometimes we just want to use the new shiny thing and that provides us a reason to perform a redesign.

Another part to this one is learning something that fixes an outdated hack. As CSS advances so rapidly lately, we're left with architectures that have obsolete styles in order to patch holes of missing functionality. "New knowledge" could vey well be new browser knowledge.

For fun/enjoyment

Self explanatory, heck, this is how I spend my Saturday nights! I believe a lot of people responding to my poll just enjoy working on their websites and find the process of tweaking the design and trying new things to be fun. I'd almost call it a hobby or pastime, and an enjoyable one that can bring a lot of satisfaction.

Dopamine

And dopamine. Yep, the process of working on our sites is a major dopamine dispenser. As I sit here typing these reasons out my brain is just pumping the dopamine out, I can feel it! I think working on the designs (and content!) of our sites is a lot like other "home making" routines. I don't know about you, but I get a crazy high from cleaning my house. Forget about it being a chore, it just feels so good afterwards. I especially get this after rearranging the furniture.

Accessibility fixes

This one could fall under "new knowledge," I suppose. But it could also be a platform change, or a change of tooling. Accessibility fixes can often entail a total redesign if the original design was entirely inaccessible through structure or color or interactivity.

Mobile friendly

It might seem strange today to say a redesign was to make a site more mobile friendly, but there are still many non-mobile friendly sites out there. I am always shocked when I come across them. Responsive web design has been around for 14 years this month! Some platforms are still serving two separate sites for "desktop" and "mobile" and a redesign can go hand-in-hand with abandoning this outdated approach.

Add features

I would put this one in the "constant tweaking" camp, or as I mentioned above, this could itself be a redesign. New features, especially when they become core functionality, can completely transform a platform or site. Often we introduce these as little add-ons and they work so well we start to refactor other bits to also use the feature. And before you know it you're overhauling large parts of your site.

Peer pressure

Hahahahaha, yeah, I guess? I'm trying to think of a time this would describe something I worked on or even something I might do with my own site. For some reason, I think this might apply more to a platform change, than design. Though I suppose if there was some high profile site redesign that a lot of people follow or read, that might have influence on someone else to also do so? But, Lynn Fisher does this every year and I don't see a lot of other people doing the same level of design and jaw-dropping intrigue with their frequent redesigns. I think I need more information on this one.

Job change

This was actually another common answer, though a little further down from the top answers. A site refresh to go with a job search or starting a new position makes a lot of sense. Perhaps you are working on a new platform at work and this gets your juices flowing. If you have a hand in the design system, you will find yourself incorporating what you work on into your own site. I've done this before even subconsciously.

I think the even more common side of this is to put a new "face" forward when seeking employment. This could go along with a portfolio or resume refresh, and swath of new content to show thought leadership or creative process. It is probably a fairly pressure-filled way to get a redesign done and might even have you throwing it out if things don't go well in the job search.

Embarrassed?

I only had a couple of responses in this line, but I'm mentioning it anyway. We've all looked at our sites and thought they were tired or outdated. Sometimes my opinion of my weblog changes from day-to-day; one day I think, wow, I really love this design, only to find fault after fault a couple days later. These are probably more internally charged feelings than really reflective of our sites, but we find control where we can. Sometimes the control we have over our sites is where we will find the escape and relief we seek that we cannot find elsewhere. It's a little bit of digital therapy.

New ideas

Is this redundant? Perhaps this belongs with "new knowledge," but I think it is different. Ideas are maybe more structural changes, but they can reflect in the design. Maybe this could even be a result of a personal change that makes you see your site in a new light and desire change.

Version History

One of the coolest parts of this poll was remembering that so many people keep a version history of their blogs! And not just the code, nor just what Archive.org might store, they have either a fully functioning version of the historical design or screenshots from across the site. I like to think when I redesign or rearchitect this weblog that I will take the time to also do this. But I imagine it is a lot of work.

Here are a handful of personal sites with version history:

• CKN/Christopher Kirk-Nielsen
• Tyler Gaw
• anhvn
• Lynn Fisher

What about you?

So, if you didn't participate in this poll and have an answer other than what my exhaustive research provided, how often do you redesign your site and why? Also, if you have a version history or archive of your site, I want to add you to this list! Let me know by replying on Mastodon or send me an email using the link below.

What's next? Maybe I'll stop asking this because I haven't been able to guess what's next yet!

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A decade later a friend much younger than me moved to Portland to attend The Art Institute of Portland. I had heard of this school from a friend of my sister who had attended before the EDMC acquisition and was a very talented artist at Disney. I was always an artistic and creative person but had never considered myself someone who would go to art school, I was more on the math and science path before becoming ill.

Nonetheless this young whippersnapper convinced me to come down and visit her and the school. I drove down on a whim one day. I distinctly remember driving around the Pearl District, visiting some apartment buildings, parking next to P.F. Chang's on Couch, having lunch, and then rounding the block to visit the school. I left Portland that day having signed up to attend, starting in fall 2005.

You could say this was spur-of-the-moment and it was. In fact, a long-time coworker at the restaurant job I'd been at for nine years said this was unlike anything she'd ever seen me do—I was always so deliberate and thought everything out before taking any action. Another acquaintance claimed I was "no spring chicken" and what did I think I was doing.

I chose to make this snap decision to attend college anew on the tail-end of a life-changing end to a relationship. I had been with this person more than ten years, since high school, and his decision to have an affair with a mutual friend, and the wife of his cousin, destroyed my world view. I lost an entire group of friends who were willing to see beyond this unforgivable behavior and I just wanted to get out—out of town!

So perhaps I didn't see the quick signup for school or need to move my life 50 miles away as anything more than me seizing opportunity. I was in remission for my illness, something that has never made sense until more recently, as I'm now in a worsening relapse and I've been going back through time mapping things out.

In the end, I came to really enjoy my time at that school. I made some good friends, though I hardly keep in touch with many of them anymore. I did actually get an education in a field I am still interested in (and could be making a living were I still working) but there were many other degrees offered that were not much more than hot air.

It was an expensive private school and many people took out private loans, above whatever federal loans they qualified for. Or worse, could not qualify for federal loans due to family constraints, mostly due to age and parental income, and therefore had very expensive private loans. I somehow lucked out having been 29 and fully on my own. I got nearly all of my degree covered by federal loans and just a few grants. I took out one private loan my last year when I was pushing to graduate and stopped working.

Speaking of, my degree went by two names: Web Design & Interactive Media and Interactive Media Design. The students in this program were quite sought after in the Portland web industry and I began working full-time only two years into my degree. I never felt like I wasn't going to get anything out of it and really enjoyed the time I spent there with many other smart students, some who even came back to the school as adjunct faculty.

But there was always something hanging over that school. Something about recruitment and profit. The school changed ownership and management at least twice. My department head saw some questionable changes. But the day-to-day and course work still held true to the goals we all had and it was all very relevant and cutting edge.

I graduated with honors, meeting an honor society of students I'd never met before because I'd never attended any meetings as someone going to school and working full-time. I was also in my 30s when I graduated and these students were many years my junior. I didn't have much in common with them. I believe the top student in my graduating class (across degrees) only had a few points above me in grade point average. I was like number two or three.

I went on to have a decent career, moving mostly within the realm of Drupal, front-end development, and design systems. I didn't leave school with any ill will but over the years I heard of more and more bad things happening with not only the school itself, but the degree program I had finished. Eventually it was dropped and no longer offered. Several years later the Portland Art Institute shuttered.

I recall a colleague mentioning at one point that a client required everyone's proof of degree to work with them, and having graduated from a school that no longer existed meant having to scramble to find their actual diploma. I know I've got mine somewhere, but shortly after that I contacted the extended education department in Oregon that keeps track of all secondary education by accredited schools and keeps all transcripts. I requested multiple copies.

Jumping forward quite a bit in time, I'm currently not working due to my illness. I'm on an "extended hiatus" hoping that someday I will either be in remission or well enough to work again, at least part time, freelance, or on a contract basis. During this time Covid upended the world, and it still hangs heavy over my existence as I am particularly vulnerable.

The Biden administration offered student loan debt relief for many borrowers based on income eligibility. I qualified for $20,000 in relief, less than half of what I still owed, but a major offer of relief nonetheless. That relief never came as the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the program and left millions of borrowers hanging.

Then today I got an unexpected email from Federal Student Aid at the US Department of Education with information that could not have shocked me more. I was entirely unaware that this was even a case being fought or that the Department of Education was heading down this path of relief based on school malfeasance. Here is the introduction of the email:

Caught so unawares and positive this could not be relied on as truth I first checked the sender email, checking out as from studentaid.gov. I then also noticed a newer feature in iCloud emails in Mail.app that shows a "Verified Logo," apparently BIMI support for "brand logos [that] have been digitally certified". Another omg.lol member mentioned that they must be using GMC (Government Mark Certificate) to accomplish this. Now I was believing it was true.

Finally, I decided to look up "Student Loan Discharge Based on Borrower Defense Evidence" to see what I could find, as I wasn't quite familiar with what that entailed beyond what was provided in the email. The Department of Education's press release from May 1, 2024, was the first result:

The Biden-Harris Administration today announced the approval of more than $6.1 billion in automatic student loan relief to nearly 317,000 borrowers who enrolled at any Art Institute campus on or after Jan. 1, 2004, through Oct. 16, 2017. The U.S. Department of Education (Department) found that The Art Institutes and its parent company, Education Management Corporation (EDMC), made pervasive and substantial misrepresentations to prospective students about postgraduation employment rates, salaries, and career services during that time.

Well, I'll be damned. Still in shock and frankly in tears, I called several people. I posted about it on the omg.lol Discord and I decided to make today's WeblogPoMo post be about this news. So here we are. Of course the email provides some additional language to consider, and I'll definitely be talking with my accountant about some of that.

This will also take some time to process so nothing appears to have changed on my loan servicer's website. But the loan should be deferred/in forbearance until the discharge occurs, no further money from me is due. It's an incredible weight off my shoulders as someone who is chronically ill, not currently working, and trying her best to hold onto her home, while navigating what my future might look like.

The only concern I have with this is related to how it might change the "appearance" of my degree. I'm so far out of school now I don't even know if an employer would ask for degree information, but how does it look that: a) the school not only doesn't exist anymore, but b) it was litigated by the Department of Education as having misled and taken advantage of students. I still find great pride in my degree. It was a huge part of my life amid very large changes, I did it all on my own, it's an accomplishment I am still proud of to this day.

What's next? Here's hoping the next post will put me back on track!

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Links in this post:

• About BIMI support in Apple Mail
• Government organizations can now get Verified Mark Certificates for their outgoing emails
• Biden-Harris Administration Approves $6.1 Billion Group Student Loan Discharge for 317,000 Borrowers Who Attended The Art Institutes
• WeblogPoMo 2024 and tiny pages.

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May is ME Awareness Month. ME/CFS is Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, a mostly life-long energy destroying, often post-viral, chronic illness that I cannot adequately put into words what it does to a life. My life. I've had it since I was a teenager.

It's a wild thing to be a smart, dedicated, and ambitious person with such an illness. It hangs over me always, forcing me to perform complicated cost calculations to do the most modest life tasks: if I do this thing will I still be able to do this other thing I really need to do? can I push it off until next week? what other unforeseen event will happen that I have no control over that will throw off all my calculations completely? will I run out of food and not have the energy to get more? These are all very real and valid thoughts I've had. And these aren't even the darkest of them.

Only about 25% of people with ME/CFS can still work. Another 25% of them are in the severe or very severe category of the illness and spend most of their lives in bed, often in completely darkened conditions, because even the slightest stimuli can throw them into oblivion (a crash). There's no easy way to explain that the life and bodily functions you, a mostly healthy person, take for granted can overextend people with ME/CFS. We call this post-exertional malaise (PEM) or "a crash." Sometimes a crash can cause our overall baseline to become worse, sending us into another category. This happened to me between roughly 2018-2021, I went from mild to moderate, able to work to mostly unable to work.

When I was working full-time, I would go through crashes and miss a day or two of work, taking PTO, to lay around my house feeling like shit and loathing myself. Feeling like it was my fault and I was letting my team down by being out. Missing day three's WeblogPoMo post has brought that feeling back and I don't like it at all.

It's been amazing to see all the enthusiasm around this challenge. Humbling and energizing at the same time. The landing page for the challenge, over the period of a few days, sent more traffic to my weblog than a post on Hacker News that linked to my weblog did in December last year. Watching Pomo! posts come through my timeline on Mastodon makes me smile every time. You are all so great and I'm really thankful this challenge helped prompt more people to post on their blogs or start a new blog or revisit an old blog or just continue to blog like they always have!

After missing day three, I'm trying to be kind to myself and will be getting back to my CSS Color 4 research and outline post. I probably overestimated how easy that research was going to be, giving myself a day—what was I thinking? So, be gentle with yourselves and others. It's okay to take a break and don't beat yourself up over it, you'll be better for the rest you are given.

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A large refactor of weblog's base (and component) styles should include this new base, and use many of the new modern CSS tools we have now to work with, including CSS cascade layers. In order to get up-to-speed on many of the new tools, some which I've only read about, others I've used but not done a deep dive, I want to create individual case studies for each tool or set of tools. These will be done on tiny pages themselves but work to create a Tiny Pages base, so-called because I am aiming for a small footprint.

I want this Tiny Pages base to stand on its own and look and feel okay without any further styles. The idea here came from what I did on the WeblogPoMo 2024 landing page. I used what I learned while deep diving color-scheme and system colors to put together a landing page with very few styles that will still perform in a light or dark color mode, system or user preference. This was a good start and I had a lot of fun doing it, as well as learning about it and writing the blog post covering what I learned.

Shortly after publishing that post I had a brain worm (sort of like an ear worm, but an idea, not a sound) to add "tints" to system colors to achieve cohesion with a theme. On themes.lol Styles I had begun working with form controls and CSS accent-color and came across a discussion on Mastodon between @sarajw and @mia about using CSS color-mix() function with system colors. All of a sudden my brain worm turned into reality and I achieved that "tint" I had envisioned. You can see this on the bottom of Style pages in the form input[type="text"], select, and textarea.

input[type="text"] {
  accent-color: var(--link);
  background-color: color-mix(in srgb, Field, var(--highlight) 35%);
  ...
}

The last two images show a range input using CSS accent-color which adds a theme color to the bottom/selected portion of the range input. This is also applied to the text input, which isn't actually listed as supporting accent-color but in Firefox is used as the border/outline "focus" color, and contrasts with the "tinted" background color using color-mix() with the Field system color and another contrasting theme color. This now sits squarely in my brain waiting for further theme development using color-mix() and system colors.

What's next? My next deep dive will be on the new color spaces and functions. I know there is a lot to cover so it will span a few posts. I'd like to go into color-mix() more first, to complement what I've done with it and system colors on the form elements, and then other functions before starting into the new color spaces. I know this is a huge topic and probably deserves its own series, so I expect my next post on the topic may be more of a roadmap of how I plan to dive into it. I also need to finish setting up my Tiny Pages site, so that may or may not come first.

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Links in this post:

• WeblogPoMo 2024 and tiny pages.
• Tiny pages and not-so-tiny pages.
• WeblogPoMo 2024
• What I've learned about CSS color-scheme and friends.
• Weblog Themes
• Weblog Styles, Style List
• @sarajw on front-end.social
• @mia on front-end.social

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