I decided to re-platform my personal website, moving it from WordPress to React. It was spurred by a curiosity to learn a more modern tech stack like React and the drama in the WordPress community that erupted last month. While I doubt WordPress is going away anytime soon, I do think this rift opens the door for designers, developers, and clients to consider alternatives.

First off, I’m not a developer by any means. I’m a designer and understand technical things well, but I can’t code. When I was young, I wrote programs in BASIC and HyperCard. In the early days of content management systems, I built a version of my personal site using ExpressionEngine. I was always able to tweak CSS to style themes in WordPress. When Elementor came on the scene, I could finally build WP sites from scratch. Eventually, I graduated to other page builders like Oxygen and Bricks.

So, rebuilding my site in React wouldn’t be easy. I went through the React foundations tutorial by Next.js and their beginner full-stack course. But honestly, I just followed the steps and copied the code, barely understanding what was being done and not remembering any syntax. Then I stumbled upon Cursor, and a whole new world opened up.

Obviously, Covid-19 wreaked havoc on the world and countless lives this past year. We all know someone who caught the virus or died from it, or we were infected ourselves. We tried to do our part by staying home to limit our exposure to other people. We stayed away from our loved ones to protect them and to slow the spread. To keep ourselves occupied, many of us took up baking, cooking, knitting, or exercising. I started on what would become a yearlong path of learning about whatever interested me.

YouTube as a Gateway to Knowledge

Video site YouTube saw an explosion in traffic from people bored in lockdown. I was one of them. At first, I was simply trying to learn how to optimize my work-from-home setup. Channels such as Podcastage and Curtis Judd taught me about microphones, and I upgraded my audio setup.

Yesterday Lunar/Theory (my partner David and I) launched version 2.0 of our iPad app DesignScene. Take a look at the trailer:

I’ll write more about it in the coming days. Meanwhile, read this post on our blog about it.

I’m really proud to announce that DesignScene for iPad has shipped today. From idea to release, it’s been about a year in the making. Here’s a little trailer I made in case you missed it:

I’ll be frank and say that this app was really made for me. Like many designers I spend a lot of my time going from website to website looking at stuff and reading up on trends. I eventually started using RSS feeds but even my feeds got unwieldy. I dreaded opening up Google Reader and seeing “1000+” unread items.