Ever since dominik.net first went up in 1999, I’ve found myself wanting to redesign it. I had magnificant plans developed over 2000 that ballooned so far out of proporation as to escape the realm of possible implementation. In Spring 2000 I finally launched a scaled back “temporary site” that has not unsurprisingly become the site known today, albeit with several significant cosmetic changes. I’ve been longing for a while to redo the site, but have an aversion to using pre-made code. I’m not certain why — perhaps a sense of pride in writing everything myself, and thus this livejournal is a cop out of a sorts — it isn’t on dominik.net per se, but allows for content. I’ve been looking at Movable Type lately, but am inexperienced with it. I was impressed by what I saw over at subtraction.com — a truly beautiful website design.
Another issue is that dominik.net is not just a weblog — it was originally a classic 90s-style homepage and still retains remnants of that in terms of its design. How could I reorganize the main content areas of the site to suit something like Moveable Type? It is this unholy union that makes me wary of using premade software such as Movable Type, because I’d like the site to far more seamless than it is right now — I want site and blog to be one, not separate entities as they are now. But I am not sure how to build something integrated (admittedly subtraction.com does a good job with it, though almost all the content there is in the blog).
Does anyone have any experience or thoughts to share with prepackaged blogging software in general or Movable Type in specific? I’d be grateful for your feedback.