Overhauling a website menu shouldn’t feel like navigating a boring spreadsheet, but standard nav bars always play it way too safe. For the latest update to iamchrispaezjr.com, I wanted something that actually had a pulse — so I turned a basic drop-down into a full-on dashboard.
Inspired by TagDiv’s clean newspaper layouts, I mashed everything together into one unified menu modal. At the very top, I dropped in a social link scroller complete with active follower counters just for the socials, keeping the rest of the navigational links clean and out of the way. It gives the whole site less of a standard portfolio vibe and more of an interactive command center.
What Else Is Cooking…
Aside from the site glow-up, the domain and project pipeline has been moving crazy fast:
Disease Imagined: Still cooking with this one, pushing the Three.js and interactive 3D elements further than my previous builds.
Noisegoblin: R.I.P. to SoundDrop — had to pivot away from that name due to an existing company trademark, but Noisegoblin is a way cooler name for an audio project anyway.
The Fantasy Project: While my first four web projects were more utility and showcase-focused, I’m currently working on building project number five. This one is leaning heavily into fantasy and sort of gamey lore mechanics with a bit of wiki, and it’s easily one of the most fun things I’ve worked on yet.
Honestly, Cursor doing this with me has been great — getting this deep into frontend work with JavaScript and CSS, while AI helps me build it, is so awesome. The fact that I can dream up an interface design and actually get it built from scratch is wild. If I knew how addictive self-taught web dev would be, I honestly would’ve started years ago.
More updates coming soon.