Redesigning the Website

FYI, I’m in the process of redesigning the Chappell Family Website. Originally designed in the early 1990’s, I’ve upgraded from time to time in order to keep up with developments as HTML progressed to new versions, now HTML5, and as stylesheets were adopted and advanced, now CSS3. We always had to deal with different monitor sizes and pixel densities, but the range was mostly from 800×600 pixels to 1024×768 pixels, though some folks had larger monitors. With the advent of the “mobile web”, however, the new catch-word became “responsive”. Web pages now have to “respond” to screen sizes ranging from 320×480 (mobile phones) to desktop monitors and flatscreen TV’s. Google, of course, is a major driver of “responsiveness” due to its control over search results. It now prioritizes “mobile friendly” websites – those that are designed to look good and be user friendly on smartphones. Many websites are now designed on the “mobile first” principle – make your initial design for smartphones, then add whatever is necessary to make it also work on larger screens. So, now we have to design web pages for viewing in smartphones, small tablets, large tablets, laptops, desktops and flatscreen TV’s; not to mention wrist watches. I’m not even trying for watches. :eyepop: :boggled: :faint:

So, I’m making The Chappell Family Web Portal a “responsive” website that hopefully looks okay on everything from phones to flatscreens. However, there are a lot of pages here, not even counting blog articles. Since hardly anybody visits this site, anyway, there’s not a lot of pressure to get it done. If you happen to be one of the few visitors who drops by these days, you’ll find some pages are fine in your smartphone or tablet, other pages not so fine yet. As for this blog, it would be easy to make it mobile friendly by simply switching to one of the thousands of prefab responsive themes that are available, but it’ll take some work to make it look like the rest of the website. I’m trying to retain  the old “look” as much as possible.

I wanted to let y’all know what’s going on, because I decided to go ahead and launch new pages as they become “fit to print”. If I wait until it’s all done, well, who knows if I’ll even live that long! The Ancestry section of the site is getting priority. I’m always hopeful that some as yet unknown (to us) relative will find the site and get in touch. It’s really really cool when that happens, and I wouldn’t want a distant, or near, cousin to pass us by because our site wasn’t mobile friendly.

John