A glimpse into the past...
This site has had 3 main layouts since it opened.
Note: This page is mostly for archiving the mainsite's layouts. Meaning subsites on different layouts, as well as "project pages" may be missed. Images open in new tab
No screenshots or archives exist for this layout. Though From memory, it was a very basic bootstrap site with a navbar instead of a sidebar, a large banner, no background. I honestly don't like this one, but I'm still pressed I didn't bother at least taking one in-dev screenshot
Jade Everstone (this site) got it's first layout in late 2021, and started as just a portfolio site with my initial plan being "make porfolio now, personal site later". At the time my main concern was I wanted to move off Carrd, but every other site builder I tried didn't fit what I wanted. I already had HTML knowledge from coding profiles for toyhouse so I decided instead to dig up my neocities page I made & never touched and made it my "portfolio page."
As mentioned before, I hated the original layout. The main things I wanted over the last one was feeling less "minimal", a cleaner design, and a sidebar... *sigh* That sidebar
This version's sidebar was a Bootstrap navbar forced into being vertical. It did it's job for the most part, but it was very clunky feeling. This was also when I started adding more pages to the site, such as the Everlogs, and project pages (before iirc projects just linked to DA).
v1.5 was a very minor layout change, in which I just added a secondary layout for project pages, a different header style, and switch the navs to using Javascript (mostly because updating pages individually got overwhelming after a while, especially because I tend to miss things or get stuck in "oh god did I actually do this right?" a lot. So stripping back the amount of pages I need to edit for a site-wide change helps "ease" the stress for me)
v1.5 was extremely short lived. Because I decided a "portfolio page" isn't what I wanted for myself or my art, so I dropped that for making a personal site! (with a focus on art ofcourse!) And that meant a new layout better suited for that.
It started because I wanted a new sidebar: with me wanting to make way for more pages, the old one had to go as it got clunkier the more I added onto it. But after a while of fighting with the old layout I just redid the whole thing. The main vibe I'm going for is "sleek". In other words, a more 'filled-out' feel like many 2000's-early 10's sites, but with the responsive functionalities of modern websites (without the minimalisim ofc... I'm not a fan of 'material design', but that's a rant for another day). And hey, I finally got that responsive nav working the way I wanted it to!