Ever since I started using the fantastic web development framework Ruby On Rails I've come to an interesting realization. Coding websites is really easy, but designing them is really hard. At least for me.

When I was asked to do the redesign for the American Clematis Society's website I went work right away. In no less than two days I had 90% of the functionality working. There was a complete content management system, admin interface and even some of more complicated sections like the groovy clematis flower database, all basically done. I was thinking this was going to be a breeze! "Piece of cake," I thought.

So two months later I'm finally done. As it turns out designing a website that looks good, works well, is modern and standards compliant is a major pain in the ass. The time I spent adjusting colors and doing mockups in Photoshop absolutely dwarfed the amount spent actually programming. The end result is pretty good. It's much better than the previous version of the site anyway. But I'm still not even close to satisfied. You see my standards are higher than my talent and skill can achieve. That annoys me to no end. :-)

Anyhow, I flipped the switch and set the new site live tonight. They'll be issuing a press release in a week or two but I wanted to "beta test" for a bit first to work out any bugs. So if you're bored, and especially if you have no idea what a "clematis" is (no it's not a naked body part) then please head on over to clematis.org and have a look around.

P.S. If you happen to be a good visual designer with strong XHTML and CSS skills and want to work both for free (on fun projects) and for hire (when we're lucky), drop me a line.