Previous visitors of Destination: Success (buniek.com) may notice that a lot of changes have taken place.
Originally, this space was used as my online design portfolio. As my web design business grew, and more clients found me through online channels through name recognition, I decided it was time to capitalize on it.
That prompted me to move the portfolio to Teli Design Studio, but buniek.com remained dormant and unloved for many months while most of my web work was filtered through the studio.
The Revival
I toyed with the idea of turning buniek.com into a commercial template website, but the time commitment required was more than I had available.
Though I may introduce some commercial templates down the line, I decided a different direction would be more appropriate.
Destination: Success is the place where I will publish my public goals and plans for my websites, along with my observations on running a business, web design as it relates to business, and the occasional case study.
Layout Decisions
A hybrid between a traditional website and a blog was my final decision for the site, because I don’t want the website to be read entirely like a blog.
- No dates. I want most of the entries to be read like articles. However, the comments will be dated.
- Comments. To encourage visitor interaction and participation, I’ve decided to enable comments and trackbacks.
- File Extensions. I decided that a .html file extension would be appropriate as that was the format used before on the site. It’s also a familiar extension for many web goers.
- Web Feeds. The feeds will allow visitors to subscribe to site updates without needing to visit the site every day.
- Newsletter. For those visitors who don’t want to or can’t subscribe to the feeds, I’ve created a weekly newsletter for site updates and other news.
Pitfalls And Potential Problems
One of my main concerns with Destination: Success was leaving it unattended as I had before.
To alleviate that, I decided WordPress would be an ideal solution. I’m very familiar with the software, it’s easy to install and use, and it’s flexible in its customizability.
The website was established in 2004, so it had accumulated a number of inbound links. I didn’t want to loose those inbound links or frustrate any web users who may be searching for something in particular.
Taking into account the most popular pages of the website, and the pages that received the most search engine traffic, I set up 301 permanent redirects using .htaccess to an entry I created specifically addressing the issue.
For the pages I may have overlooked, I set up a custom 404 error page which allows them to notify me about the problem along with the problematic URL.
The original contact form with the website was a little too overzealous with its spam filtering and a number of people were accused of being dirty spammers and kicked off my website for trying to send in a quick hello.
The newly updated contact form is a lot more lenient, but still has the spam checks in place to protect against malicious form submissions and spam attempts.
Final Thoughts
I’m sure that I will continue to make slight modifications to the site as the site settles into its new clothes.
All in all, I hope that the new Destination: Success will help others while still serving as my back up brain.
