Voitanos 2.0 - Realizing the New Brand with a New Website!

Last year, I began a sustained effort to reinvent and reposition Voitanos, an initiative that has become my largest project since founding Voitanos in October 2016!

What's Next for Me: Introducing Voitanos OnDemand Courses

Reflections on a Career Journey Teaching SharePoint and Creating Training Content - Author shares their experiences and accomplishments.

https://www.voitanos.io/blog/introducing-voitanos-for-ondemand-courses/

Today, I’m beyond thrilled to share with you the new Voitanos website!

This is the second wave release of a multi-wave project—there’s more to come. I want to briefly share how I got here because when someone I deeply respect went through this same process, their transparency helped guide me. This article is a small way of paying it forward.

Looking Back - How I Got Here

From day one of building and launching Voitanos, I took a lean approach by doing almost everything myself. This included setting up the platform for customer purchases and course consumption, creating the public website, and developing the brand. Occasionally, I worked with contractors for specific needs like logo design or website fixes.

The first site was ugly but functional when it launched in late 2016.

In August 2020, I built and launched a new website, primarily using the then-emerging utility-first CSS framework TailwindCSS—which has since become widely popular and beloved.

Announcing the new Voitanos website!

Over this past weekend, we rolled out a brand new voitanos.io website! This is the first major refresh of the site since we launched Voitanos in 2017. You'll notice a ton of improvements, new features & sections, content updates and an overall better experience. In this post, I'll share some of the new and improved aspects to the site.

https://www.voitanos.io/blog/announcing-new-voitanos-website/

Though it was a significant improvement thanks to UI blocks in TailwindPlus (formerly TailwindUI), the site was still designed by me—a developer at heart.

I’ve always been realistic about my capabilities: I’m a developer with some design knowledge. At the time, I didn’t realize how much this limitation would impact my business.

Until last year…

Realizing it was Time for a Change

In 2024, I watched someone I greatly admire (Jay Clouse) rebrand his business. He shared the entire journey with remarkable transparency, from his decision-making process to his experiences working with various vendors.

It made me realize something profound: my understanding of what a brand truly was, to be completely honest, had been wrong.

Setup 1 - I Needed a Branding Expert

After this realization, I was fortunate to meet with the same brand expert at a conference in June 2024 to discuss the process.

Hollie Arnett, through her business Maker & Moxie, delivered exactly what I needed—a powerful message and brand strategy for Voitanos. The most valuable part of working with Hollie was how she challenged me with thought-provoking questions that led to deep self-reflection. She pushed me to develop thorough answers to:

• Why do I do what I do?
• What gives me energy?
• Who do I want to serve?

With clear answers to these fundamental questions, I felt energized about the future. I now had a well-defined mission and path forward.

Hollie’s work led to the wave 1 release of this long reinvention of Voitanos that I shared in October 2024, as rolling out Wave 1 of Voitanos 2.0

Concepts Made Clear: Introducing the New Voitanos Brand

Discover Voitanos' new brand identity, featuring a refreshed logo and theme. Learn how Voitanos will better serve developers in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.

https://www.voitanos.io/blog/concepts-made-clear-introducing-the-new-voitanos-brand/

While this release may have appeared modest, it marked the first visible step in this major transformation. The changes included a new logo, brand-wide typography, and several new brand graphics.

All of these elements embodied the mission that clearly defines me, what I do, and who I serve:

Step 2 - I Needed a New Website

Fresh off the rebranding, I started working with a web designer on a new site. Hollie recommended Martin Cris, and I couldn’t be happier with the results!

As it turns out, Martin was also Jay Clouse’s web designer for his rebranding project—a wonderful validation that I’d made the right choice.

Martin worked with me to develop an entirely new site design that not only reflects Hollie’s brand guidelines but better communicates what I have to offer. As a classic developer, I always focus on features when making purchases—what exactly do I get when buying a car, phone, computer, or service? While each course still includes those technical details, the site’s messaging now better conveys the why behind each course and how it will help you achieve your desired results!

I then collaborated with a developer to transform Martin’s Figma designs into static page templates using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with the latest TailwindCSS release (v4). From there, I implemented these page designs as a new theme in Hugo, the static site generator (SSG) I use to power this site.

This week, the site went live as the 2nd wave in Voitanos 2.0!

While the new site is live, there are still several tasks remaining in the site design. Due to time constraints, I had to prioritize certain elements for launch. Many of these pending items are internal improvements, though some visual components from Martin’s original design will be added as I tackle the post-launch backlog.

But, I didn’t want to delay the launch of the new site any longer because…

What’s Next?

The new website release represents the second wave of our four-part rollout. Wave 3 is launching within the next two months. I decided to separate these waves because implementing both the new site and the upcoming changes simultaneously would have been too ambitious.

Here’s a teaser for Wave 3: it will bring the most significant improvement for my course students since Voitanos launched its first course in early 2017: Understanding the SharePoint Framework Development Toolchain.

As for Wave 4, those plans remain under wraps for now. It will mark the pinnacle of my ability to fulfill my mission:

What do you think of the new site?

I’d love to hear what you think about the new website - drop a comment below!

author

Andrew Connell

Microsoft MVP, Full-Stack Developer & Chief Course Artisan - Voitanos LLC.

Andrew Connell is a full stack developer who focuses on Microsoft Azure & Microsoft 365. He’s a 20+ year recipient of Microsoft’s MVP award and has helped thousands of developers through the various courses he’s authored & taught. Whether it’s an introduction to the entire ecosystem, or a deep dive into a specific software, his resources, tools, and support help web developers become experts in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, so they can become irreplaceable in their organization.

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