It is here!! Our new website went up over the weekend & I am thrilled about it. I would love to take credit for the updated version of EmuTile.com, but it all goes to my wonderful husband, Darrell, who preformed the upgrade. I did help with design decisions, but he did all the set up and made the switch. What a guy! We would both love for you to click around & tell us what you think.
After you explore the new site for a bit you might want to see how far Emu Tile has come in the last 8 and a half years. As I said in the title, this is the 4th incarnation of EmuTile.com. The first site dates back to early 2005. The graphic design was questionable at best; the font and background combo made everything really hard to read. I think we only ever sold one or two tiles on that site. But I can't help it- I love that little ugly duckling! At that time, I suspect a lot of people thought we were crazy to try to start a business- we obviously didn't know what we were doing! But what we lacked in business acumen, we made up for in exuberance. I was very excited about making tiles (still am!) and I figured that everything else would work itself out. And it has, for the most part. Lucky for me, Darrell has always believed in my crazy vision, and never pushed me to get a "real" job. Fun fact: almost all of the tile designs on that first website are still part of my catalog today.
EmuTile.com Mark 1
We only had that first site for a few months (truth be told, it was more of a placeholder than a website.) EmuTile.com mark 2 was born later in 2005. Darrell found me a new "wysiwyg" (what you see is what you get) type software called "Contribute" that made updating the website easy for me. The second website was a big improvement over the first, but it looks a bit dated now. This screen grab is circa 2007 :
EmuTile.com Mark 2
In summer of 2011, we switched over to the content management system Drupal 6. With EmuTile.com #3, we got a lot of great new features and a boost in business. Drupal doesn't seem to translate well into whatever system the "Wayback Machine" uses to archive the web. The content was archived, but the look and feel of everything except the front page of site #3 are lost to internet history. If you have been to our site in the last two years, you might remember it:
EmuTile.com #3
So that brings us up to the present: EmuTile.com #4. It is up to the minute; it runs on Drupal 7 and works on most mobile devices. It feels clean, bright and modern now, but the web moves fast. I can only guess how dated site #4 will look to us in another 8 years. What EmuTile.com will look like in 2021? Only time will tell. It should be interesting to find out!
