Keri Henare

As I'm heading overseas to travel I've decided to switch to a US based webhost. I've been hosted at iServe in New Zealand since I decided to start my own website. Friends tried to convince me to move my hosting offshore to take advantage of the lower pricing, but I've always been a loyal kiwi. iServe have been a great host and I recommend them to all New Zealanders.

My needs have changed now. I won't be in New Zealand, I'll be in America, maybe Canada and later all over Europe. So I'll need easy and quick access to my FTP and email. I also plan to open a few sites based on concepts that I've been working on which will involve a lot more international traffic.

So the question now is who to host with. I narrowed it down to two contenders, Media Temple and DreamHost. I chose these two because they seemed to be the two most used in the web standards industry. It was a little confusing because everyone seemed to support their host equally.

Media Temple

• Douglas Bowman
• Jeffrey Zeldman
• Shaun Inman

DreamHost

• Dan Cederholm
• Mike Davidson
• Dave Shea
• Jason Santa Maria

For the plans that I was looking at DreamHost seemed to have more on offer, but there was just something so appealing about Media Temple. I suddenly noticed that everyone who suggested Media Temple was on the Dedicated-Virtual plan, not the Shared-Server plan that I was looking at. So I decided to go with DreamHost as their Level 1 plan suits me best.

The winner is DreamHost

I've rewritten my contact page so that it's now a bit more attractive and works better when translated to vCard format. I've done some testing with Windows Address Book and the OS X Address Book and all seems fine. Please feel free to point out any problems you may find with the hCard otherwise any suggestions that you have.

Yes I know that I've only just rebooted back in November but exactly six months later, I'll be doing it again. The reboot is being driven by a large change in the focus of this site. I'll still be focusing on design and web standards, but I also want to make my website a place for friends and family to keep in touch while I'm at camp. The idea is to take a MacBook Pro with me to help me keep everyone updated with video podcasts and flickr feeds.

Look forward to a new design.

Just a quick note that my portfolio is back up and running, as usual all comments are welcome. I'll add some more recent work soon.

The clock hath struck midnight (GMT +12, +1 for daylight savings) which means that it is time for the unveiling of my Fall 2005 CSS Reboot.

First of all, yes it does look similar to the previous version. I experimented with radically different designs and in the end decided that this evolutionary change was best. I need a site that was a bit brighter and easier to expand as I add more content. I've also attempted to make the site more accessbility-friendly and I've put a bigger focus on correct semantics. The backend has also changed completely with the website now being powered by WordPress. The most obvious change has been switching the domain from henare.co.nz to kerihenare.com. I've changed the domain so that the url is a bit more international and is easier to remember. Please feel free to contact me if you have any suggestions about the site.

I still need to finish a few templates and get the portfolio back up.