MonogramX: a better personal website
on August 18, 2010
After some back and forth, I’ve decided that the best way to have a blog is to use a site specifically designed to solve blogging. In this case, I chose WordPress.com because I feel that Google already has too much of my data, and so Blogger (while being an excellent service) was not ideal. I should also add that this move of starting a “real” blog is not random; in fact, it is the direct effect of a new cause–a new service I am launching called MonogramX.
MonogramX is about personal branding; it’s the enterprising individual’s home on the web—it’s a way to bring everything about you under one elegant, well-designed roof. If I may be so bold so as to make this claim, I would say that it’s like my own website, only generalized for popular consumption.
Along these lines, I realized that it would be foolish to try to solve the same problems that are already solved elsewhere. The most obvious example (to me at least) was my own slapdash implementation of what was supposed to pass as a blog. I realized that the smart thing to do would just be to integrate with existing solutions—solutions that have many more dollars and hours behind them than my own. I think part of it may just be growing up and learning that there is a cost and a benefit to everything. Sure the sense of accomplishment is greater whenever you’ve done something yourself, but what if it’s just not as good as the thing that someone else made? That was basically the story of my home-baked blog system versus WordPress.com.
So why stop there? Why not just have MonogramX be a—dare I say it?—mashup machine. Shudder. Well, that phrase alone is enough to dissuade me from anything resembling it, but more to the point, MonogramX actually does do that where appropriate. Are you a photographer? You probably already have a Flickr account. I can’t write Flickr as well as Flickr writes Flickr, so yes, MonogramX will just integrate with Flickr. Same with YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and so forth. All these problems are solved and solved well by big players, so there’s no need to solve them again.
So what does MonogramX actually provide, if it purposely avoids reinventing the wheel? Well, there are two things that aren’t solved well currently, in my opinion. One of these has a software solution, and the other does not.
The first problem that I haven’t found a solution for prior to MonogramX was a good, simple, and easy way to manage my portfolios. As an amateur writer, I have a collection of essays that I want to show the world; likewise, as an amateur artist, I have some paintings and drawings that I want to share. I also have some obscure documents from college that I’d like to think people have read. And I also have some freelance projects that I want to use to establish some kind of visual resume. What can I use in this case? I couldn’t find anything that would solve all these problems simultaneously (even if there are solutions for each particular medium). I needed something that understood the concept of a “Portfolio” and the different shapes it can take, be it images, pdf documents, text, testimonials—whatever. This is the problem that I believe MonogramX solves well. Finally, a simple and straightforward way to manage all your portfolios.
The second problem is actually not a technical problem at all: it’s the issue of design. Many of the big services (with the exception of blogging services) don’t do a good job of letting you put your brand on the service. For instance, your Flickr account will always be your Flickr account, no matter what you try to make it look like; the same for your Facebook profile and YouTube channel. Similarly, if you’re an artist with your work on DeviantArt, then you’ll always feel like you are member of DeviantArt when you look at your page. We all want to be our own… something. Whatever that “something” is, it needs to be unique to those of us who are trying to establish a personal brand. It’s a design, a signature, a unique impression, a… monogram (well, you knew it was coming, right?).
To solve this second problem, in addition to being slick software, MonogramX is also a custom website design shop headed by yours truly. I wrote MonogramX with the intention of being a simple but powerful backend functionality-wise, but also completely themable in the front-end. The result is that I can offer standard designs for those wishing to use the software in a generic way, but also do custom work where it’s required.
Those are all the details I can share at the moment. I’m looking to launch MonogramX.com at the end of September, and I’ll be sure to post any updates here. Thanks for reading!
