Layout Archive

A glimpse into the past...

This site has had 3 main layouts since it opened.

Note: This page is mostly for archiving the mainsite's layouts. Meaning subsites on different layouts, as well as "project pages" may be missed. Images open in new tab

v.0 - The "Portfolio" Era (2021-early 2022)

A very basic bootstrap site with a navbar instead of a sidebar, a large banner, no background. I honestly don't like this one, and the only reason I was able to get a screenshot is because of the wayback machine (I didn't back it up otherwise!)

Jade Everstone (this site) got it's first layout in late 2021, and started as just a portfolio site with my initial plan being "make porfolio now, personal site later". At the time my main concern was I wanted to move off Carrd, but every other site builder I tried didn't fit what I wanted. I already had HTML knowledge from coding profiles for toyhouse so I decided instead to dig up my neocities page I made & never touched and made it my "portfolio page."

v.1, v.1.5 - Sidebar (2022)

As mentioned before, I hated the original layout. The main things I wanted over the last one was feeling less "minimal", a cleaner design, and a sidebar... *sigh* That sidebar

This version's sidebar was a Bootstrap navbar forced into being vertical. It did it's job for the most part, but it was very clunky feeling. This was also when I started adding more pages to the site, such as the Everlogs, and project pages (before then, all project links directed you offsite).

v1.5 was a very minor layout change, in which I just added a secondary layout for project pages, a different header style, and switch the navs to using Javascript. The reason for this was ease of updating, since at the time I coded each page manually. I tend to forget things or get stuck in a loop of "oh god did I actually do this right?" a lot, so this was the solution I came up with at the time.

v.2 - Keep it sleek (2023-2024)

v.1.5 was extremely short lived. Because I decided a "portfolio page" isn't what I wanted for my main site, so I shifted from that to making this a more personal page and online hub for my works. And that meant making a new layout better suited for that.

It started because I wanted a new sidebar: with me wanting to make way for more pages, the old one had to go as it got clunkier the more I added onto it. But after a while of fighting with the old layout I just redid the whole thing. The main vibe I was going for is "sleek". In other words, a more 'filled-out' feel like many 2000's-early 10's sites, but with the responsive functionalities of modern websites. And hey, I finally got that responsive nav working the way I wanted it to!

I made a separate site for portfolio use, so I didn't have to worry too much about having a curated gallery here. And over the time I had it I made some slight tweaks to the CSS. But eventually, I ended up outgrowing this one and it was time for a major overhaul.

v.3 - Demiroid (2024-now)

There's a dedicated post that talks about the changes I made: "Jade Everstone v.3 - Demiroid"

As a TL:DR, I wanted to do a massive code overhaul as a lot of carry-over habits from Toyhouse HTML lead to a lot of bloat. I also stripped back bootstrap to just the grid, since with my CSS knowledge now it wasn't necessary & was more of an obsticle to restyle. And above all I wanted to make the site easier to update. With the site's size, completely manual updates became increasingly more tedious. I switched over to using 11ty to build the site & did some under-the-hood reorganization of the site's file structure. It took longer than expected to finish, but it's a long overdue improvement, and with the page using a static site generator it's already future-proofed for when it comes time to change the site again.