Be Good Not Bad : Web Design :: Brian Warren : Denver, Colorado

A few weeks before Bridget’s Big Debut, I registered bridgetwarren.com. Anna and I were keeping the name a secret, so I felt pretty clever. I put up a static page and taught myself BlueprintCSS as an exercise in making a simple page for her site. It was fun, but I knew a single .html page wouldn’t last long as her website.

Fifteen days after she was born, I installed Chyrp, a lightweight blogging engine that gives a bit more oomph than Tumblr, but doesn’t aspire to be a powerful CMS. An hour or two of tweaking and designing, installing a few “feathers” and modules, I had a pretty much perfect site with some “static” pages, an RSS feed, and the ability to post new stuff on a whim.

To be honest, I enjoy posting more on Chyrp’s system than Expression Engine. There’s something to be said about an application that does just a few things very well. The aesthetics and usability of a tool that’s designed for one task are always going to be better than a multi-use tool.

I may or may not keep using Chyrp. So far, the Bridget site has been a fun little area to make little micro-experiments, so for now I’ll keep using it as that. I’ve been pleased with the results so far.