I created Nextrix just before entering college. It started out life as a personal website and then morphed into a portfolio site. I kept the website running for about 4 years and then decided that some changes needed to be made, a lot of changes! In my opinion portfolio websites are just too focused on only one objective; to attract clients. I wanted something more than just a portfolio site, so I decided to take the time to plan, design and develop a totally new concept from the ground up. This time I wanted the site to be something more so I reverted back to the original plan for the site. Something more personal, something that would allow me to express my thoughts, interests and hobbies. A place where I can discuss these topics and opinions with other people.

I want this website to display all the lessons and skills I have learnt while working in the industry; user interface design, CSS, Flash and Javascript. The primary focus is to keep it simple, nothing too flashy. Simple enough so that the user interface is easy to navigate. I want a child to be able to understand what a menu item is, and where the main body paragraph is located. The Flash and Javascript elements incorporated into this website are just eye candy, and do not distract from the functionality of the website if the user does not have the right plug-ins installed. This website still functions as it is intended if you don't have Flash Player. It still processes all the image links in the gallery sections if you have Javascript disabled. The website fits all standard resolutions from 1024 x 768 and up, and works smoothly even on an iPhone (had to borrow one for testing).

The design focuses on a science fiction theme, but does so without taking away the focus from the content. The colour scheme uses the colours from my logo as the primary focus while integrating other colours to make the site appealing. I included the colour green to direct the viewers to specific areas of the website. I went through many sketches of layout iterations for the site before any colours were applied in Photoshop. Overall I am pleased with the design and layout of the site as I feel it permits creative freedom for future expansions.

The previous version of this website was developed from scratch in PHP and was good enough to meet the needs of the website. Updating it was a pain as I never got around to making a back-end for the site, so I had to do all the updates via a direct connection to the database. This time I decided to develop the website using the Drupal CMS as I have a great deal of experience with it from my past work. Drupal has allowed me to develop and create elements much faster than coding it by hand. The biggest advantage is the great community of developers from the Core Drupal Team, to all the developers and maintainers of additional modules that has allowed me to develop such a rich website. We can't forget Dries Buytaert. If he did not create the Drupal CMS in the first place this and many other websites would not exist. My thanks goes out to all of them for an excellent CMS and community support structure. I would also like to give credit to the image gallery Javascript included on my site; FancyBox, as well as the nifty flash component that displays all my blog tags; Cumulus by Roy Tanck.

It has taken me a very long time to develop this website, only being able to work on it in my free time. This process has taught me many lessons, and I am thankful for each and every experience, but this is just the beginning. This is where all the hard work really starts to pile on. I hope you join me by sharing your opinions and thoughts within my postings.

"Our communities are not formed by just one voice, they are started because of the many."