New website
A few weeks ago I wrote that I was looking for a developer to help streamline my site, and now I’m happy to tell you what came out of it.
Basically, we made the website from scratch. It’s simple, but there’s important work done and a lot of cool stuff:
The meaning
The main thing, of course, is the meaning. I had a simple task: to tell new people clearly and briefly what I do and to whom I can potentially be useful.
Take, for example, music. How do you show a new person what I make and play? Give a link to releases on Beatport or Spotify, and he won’t know about podcasts, sets, mixes, and playlists. You give a link to Soundcloud, and first of all, you won’t find anything there (I have 318 tracks and mixes there, by the way); secondly, there’s nothing about my playlists in Spotify and thirdly, without a text description, it’s not clear anyway. And now I can just show this page on the site.
Or educational projects. Did you know I was working on creating a course for DJs, for example? Or that I was doing a master class, and in principle, I’m open to doing more in a similar format? Probably didn’t know. And that, of course, is my fault because I didn’t have any proper place to talk about it. And now there is.
Uniformity and consistency
I used to have a page about my music on daniellesden.com. Then I made a page with a story about me in general, in this domain and a different design. Then at different times, I needed to make several more pages, and they all looked different because each page was actually a mini-site with its own style and layout. Now it’s all properly uniformed.
Also, at the top and bottom of all the pages now a common menu and the blog became one of its items. Technically, the blog is a separate world, but now it looks a little friendly with the other pages too.
Two languages
Now all the pages are finally available in both Russian and English. I had two domains before, dsokolovskiy.ru and dsokolovskiy.com, but it wasn’t always obvious, and some pages were only in one language. Now it’s more straightforward.
If you want to change the language, there is a toggle in the footer at the bottom right. It works on the blog, too.
Email notifications
You can now subscribe to the site and be notified by email of my new releases, upcoming gigs, podcast episodes, and course news (when available). You don’t have to subscribe to everything at once (although you can), but only to the stuff you’re interested in.
The best part is that it all works automatically. I had a mailing before, but I didn’t do it regularly because it had to be done manually and was complicated. Now it’s self-service, with almost no input from me. Maybe someday I’ll tell you how it works “under the hood” in a separate post because it’s very interesting there, too.
Anyway, come by and visit:
Huge thanks to Ivan Ogorelkov for his help. Ivan is the technical director of the web studio and an experienced specialist. He got to the core, understood the problem and offered a solution himself.
I especially liked one moment. Everything was done, and filled, bugs were caught, and cleaned up; in fact, everything is ready. I said to Ivan: “Well, shall we roll it out?” And he was like, “You know, everything’s fine, but the top menu in the mobile version works like shit [that menu was done by me — note]. Can I make it right?” Well, and he did, and ended up redoing the menu completely, even though I hadn’t even asked him to do that. I love that kind of care and enthusiasm!
Invite Ivan to your projects: @ogorelkov.
