The rhythms of product and technological upgrades have converged such that I am now buried in various tutorials and classes. I’ve spent a number of years behind the scenes, tending to a collection of websites with all sorts of back-end idiosyncrasies and needs. And now, it’s time to catch back up a bit on current front-end development skills and best practices.

I put a site in my portfolio and later realized that I hadn’t actually worked on the front-end design for that site in about eight years, at least! I’ve worked on it’s back-end technology for nearly a decade, making all sorts of upgrades and improvements, migrating from one software package set to other even more modern scripting solutions, but the simple front-end just never seemed like it needed attention. I am very proud of how the site functions for it’s clients and it’s success in achieving it’s goals as a service. Then I looked at the sort of front-end splash page code… ugh. This is embarrassing.

So, I’m working on giving the front-end a bit of an overhaul, along with taking some continuing education classes, to brush up on the latest and greatest skills and methodologies. Not that I don’t have experience with the latest codes and tools from working with a number of different sites, but I could use a refresher on putting it all together from scratch again.

This has unfortunately coincided with a large print media layout project that also requires a bit of a brush up on Adobe InDesign CS5. I’ll be honest, it’s been a product cycle or two since I’ve worked with InDesign, or QuarkXPress, or PageMaker for that matter. So, this could be fun. More tutorials and exercises.

Meanwhile I am also looking to get an additional new professional certification, so I have a pretty significant exam looming on the horizon for that too. Time to put on some coffee and, well I was going to say hit the books, but it’s more like sit and watch educational videos, webinars, Lynda.com, CreativeEdge.com, etc. MMmm… coffee.