- HomeFleur-de-coin.com
- About this sitePast & present
It all started back in June 1997, when I first decided to build my own homepage. Surprisingly enough, the original site was still around for years after I abandoned it and you can still visit it on Web archive. Take a look at it and see how dramatically my web design skills have improved!
Since collecting coins was -and still is- one of my favorite hobbies, I decided to include a page about the coins in my collction and the coins I was offering for exchange. Slowly but steadily, I kept adding more pages with information about the currencies circulating world-wide and it soon grew out of proportion. It was time to start organizing things and I quickly put together a new section about coin collecting. Soon, it became apparent that I would have to build a new web-site dedicated to my hobby and I did just that...
Designing Fleur-de-coin.com
The new website was absolutely great and helped me a lot in making new friends and exchanging coins with people around the world. Unfortunately, in March 1999 I had to let it go for 23 months while I was serving in the Hellenic Armed Forces as a Cadet at first and a 2nd Lieutenant later. When I came back I started programming again and developed the Coin Collectors Database, where people could add, edit and remove their names without emailing me (as it was the usual solution at that time internet-wide). The database was a relative success, so I started adding new features.
| Old Design | "New" Design |
|---|---|
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| The old design looked nice (at the time), so the colors and overall visual impression remained unchanged. I only needed to find some room for banners and more complicated menus | The "new" design was based on Javascript and Active Server Pages, providing better management, improved functionality and more possibilities for future updates |
When I first started redesigning the site, I tried hard to come up with a relatively classic layout, as I knew I wouldn't be able to update it very often. I believe the final result was absolutely great, and it looked quite modern and fresh even after 3 years. The name I had chosen was -the rather generic- "Coin Site", but when I found out that it already taken I switched to "Coin Fever", which included the following sections:
- Personal Information: Included some information I was willing to share on-line.
- Readers Unite: I always believed in users' participation and the site desperately called for the help of its visitors. Unfortunately, few people ever responded...
- Coin Information: A few words about the coinage, mints and currencies of several countries, plus related terminology. Moreover, a coin gallery with a variety of coin pictures coupled with a brief description.
- Coin Articles: Some general articles about coins and coin collecting
- Trade Coins: The most important section of the site, as it generated most of the traffic. The title is pretty self-explanatory, and the Coin Collectors Database can be found in the new site too
- Links & FAQs: Some links to other sites with valuable content
- Little-known Facts: Useless, funny, strange, call them what you will
Re-Designing Fleur-de-coin.com
As time passed and traffic soared, I started receiving request to sell coins. I never had the intention of selling coins online (or offline for that matter), so I turned down all my potential 'customers'. However the requests kept coming and I decided to give it a try. I built a basic online Coin Shop and decided to purchase a domain to make things more official. I also decided to redesigning the site from scratch, a tedious and time consuming task which lasted several weeks. My first and formost concern, was to present a very different layout which wouldn't be based so much on javascript. As a matter of fact, eliminating javascript completely was high on my priority list, which unfortunately I was not able to accomplish entirely.
| Previous Design | "New" Design |
|---|---|
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| Although I did like the old design, I wanted to get rid of the dynamic javascript menus. This was probably the most important reason behind the redesign | The new design is based heavily on Cascading Style Sheets and Active Server Pages, but includes much less javascript which does not intefer with its functionality even if it is turned of |
The current design
During the past few years, since 2003, numerous smaller and bigger improvements were incorporated in the design. The content got better and new services were introduces, such as the Coin Vault. Although the layout was still Ok, especially compared to other site about coin collecting, it was again time for a complete overhaul. It all started when I decided to rewrite the Coin Vault and build the Swap Area. When I finished working, I realized that these web applications were too modern for the current layout and after a few days (only) I rolled out the new design. My main focus was the correct use of whitespace, because the site felt too cramped.
The old site felt like it didn't have enough space; the page elements starved for more space and my webpages had too many icons which were confusing my visitors. The focus of the new design is whitespace. I wanted to make things more relaxed and completely abandoned the left column, moving the menu of the site at the bottom of the page. Thus, the 3-column layout was abandoned in favor of a better looking 2-column layout.
Logo and motto
Finding a name for my site was harder than most people would assume. At first I tried a rather generic title, such as "Coin Site", but pretty soon I wanted to change it and for a while I used "Coin World" instead. Unfortunately, I soon found out the name was already taken by a rather famous publication so I had no other option than to let it go. While I was searching for a better title, I decided to go for something original that -at the same time- would represent the excitement coin collectors feel when dealing with their collections. I came up with "Coin Fever", coupled with the motto "Discover your coins" which I still use today. I soon got tired of this name too however, so I switched to "Coin Collecting". Not very original, but it improved my page ranking in Google so I kept it for quite some time.
After a while, I decided to register a domain and soon realized I would have to find yet another title for my site. Every single cobination of the words "coin", "collect", "site" etc were already taken, apart from "Coins4you" which was suggested by my girfriend and was my second best choice. After a couple of days, it hit me ... "Fleur de coin". It is a coin term with a poetic touch into it and since it denotes to a flawless coin it was an obvious choice for my flawless website(!!). Unfortunately it was taken too, but "Fleur-de-coin" was not and I quickly registered it for 3 years on August 22, 2003. I also kept the motto "Discover your coins..." and started searching for a new logo.
