NoBoundaries.org isn’t a new site, nor is this relaunch of this design that new because it was unveiled about a month or so ago. I haven’t gotten around to posting anything about it because I got it put into the public realm while switching to a new day job, so it’s been a hectic last few months in my life.
Speaking of, getting this WordPress design put together was quite the task. NoBoundaries.org is a travelogue by my friend, Andy Stoll. He put his money where his month was and set out on an around the world trip, the intention of seeing as much of it as he can. While in the first legs of the adventure, he contacted me about helping him out with his site. That turned into a redesign, so while in China, we coordinated strictly through email to exchange ideas and critiques as the process went along.
The site is probably not as finished as I might like it to be, but it can get pretty difficult to get the details sorted out when Andy is emailing you from Kazakhstan, when he is able to find some bandwidth to check his email. You also don’t want to make changes that he isn’t overly sure about or informed of, not to mention doing something that will take a lot of explanation through email. Remember, Andy is traveling as I write this, and the last thing I want him to be doing is thinking heavily about his website when he should be cranking out blog posts and videos of his travels.
The one, overall goal of the design was to make it not look like a typical blog. Andy had a lot of great ideas, and I did my best to structure it in the way that he envisioned. Sometimes that is easier said than done, but we came to a common conclusion that what we had was good to go before he ended an extended stay in China. If we had more time, especially before he left on his trip, we might have thought out the site in more detail.
As a side note, I might have pushed a Drupal design for the site if this project would have occurred before his departure from the U.S., but Andy already had a WordPress site established. He wasn’t satisfied with what he had at the time he contacted me, looking to overhaul the theme to his site. Switching him to Drupal would have taken too much to teach when someone is busy trying to travel the world.
If you’d like to see an example of some of the things Andy has been doing on his travels, check out the video below of, “What It’s Like: To Walk Through A House In A Fishing Village In China“.
That’s a really nice house. Notice the huge poster of Mao in one of the upstairs rooms…not all houses have those, so I have got to think he was staying with some people that are fairly prominent in the party. Need to go visit his site and see what its all about…
Cool stuff!