Early this morning I released the brand-new version of the website for Milton Dawes.

I have been webmaster for Milton for a few years, inheriting a simple, out-of-date website that served as an online library of his published and unpublished writings. I had been wanting to redesign Milton’s site for him for some time. Continually dangling the carrot in front of Milton that I’d been giving it some thought, I finally buckled down, found some time, and had some inspiration to overhaul his website. I found a Wordpress theme that fit his design interests (and the color scheme in his shirt!), and sure enough, he liked it, too. Very quickly, I was able to build a demo site for him, and not very long after, I went ahead and redesigned his website. The whole process of redesigning his website took me I believe less than 24 hours. I did most of it yesterday and finished off some touches today. It could have gone faster had I not had to take out some ugly code that was creeping into the new site from the old site.

Technically the new website is in beta as I learn about its kinks and get Milton contributing blog content (that will round out the design). Milton last-minute explained that he wanted to title the website “General Semantics” and have it be about that rather than about him. I think that’s an interesting shift in light of his domain name. I am curious how that branding works with his site.

As for the design, it’s pretty exciting, and I might dare say it’s the most attractive website related to general semantics that currently exists (and I know about). When you refresh the page or visit a new page, the whole color scheme changes randomly. There are little boxes showing blog content that automatically move in and drop off of the homepage. I’ve named a few categories for posts, and given some room for tagging. I still have to teach Milton a bit about how to use Wordpress, but I think he’ll like it and he’ll be able to write more often about general semantics.

If you have any feedback, comment below, else send Milton a message on his Contact page. If you like the website and his writings, I bet he’d love the feedback!