I’ve been saying for years that I want to redesign this site, but I still haven’t made many substantive changes. One of my favorite sayings is, “The cobbler’s children oft go without shoes.” It certainly applies to this site, as I spend a lot of time doing web development, studying programming, CSS techniques, SEO, user interfaces, and many other related disciplines that make up this craft. But my own site rarely changes, and I certainly haven’t applied all of the things I’ve learned. I think it’s time for that to change.
Starting Real Soon Now, you will start seeing some improvements around here. For one thing, I’m going to start posting more frequently. My current plan is to post at least once per week, with a new series called “WordPress Wednesday”. Every Wednesday, I will be posting something WordPress-related. It might be something short, like a pointer to some other article worth looking at, it might be a long article of my own, it might be an update to one of my plugins, and it may often be notes about changes I’m making to this site. I’m also thinking that I might occasionally have “Fun Friday” and “Media Monday” posts. I had originally considered “Music Monday”, but “media” is more general, and lets me cover movies, television, books, etc. I probably won’t do those every week, but expect to see them from time to time.
Also, as I just mentioned, I’m going to start making site design changes. I will probably continue to work on a completely new theme in the background, for launch in the indefinite future. But in the meantime, I will make improvements to the current theme. I want to give more prominence to features like feed and email subscriptions, my WordPress plugins and other projects, and “lifestream” features like my delicious bookmarks, Flickr photos, and Twitter messages. I will also make more subtle design changes, like tweaks to fonts, text size, colors, etc., as well.
While I will probably continue to post the occasional personal item, but I will focus mostly on more technical, web development topics. I think that these changes will make this site more useful to you, my readers. Of course, I’m open to suggestions, so if you have an idea that you think would improve this site, or a topic that you would like me to write about, contact me, and I’ll put it in my idea box!
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11 Comments
I guess I get my personal stuff about y’all Campbells from Twitter and the occasional email, eh?
I actually like the theme for this website, the only parts I don’t like is the NAV Bar up top. Looks very plain imo, maybe nicer looking buttons etc.
I think the sidebar needs more space either side of the sidebar content, needs about 10px gap either side…
Nicer looking comments would be a bonus.
Other then those three things I like the theme a lot.
You might consider cleaning up that sidebar of yours too
Probably some dead links and sites that aren’t really link worthy anymore…just a thought 
First time here and I thought that it looks like it is a very interesting blog, and am looking forward to the upcoming posts. By the way I like the looks of your theme. But that is my opinion!!
Instead of writing you will do some changes, you should do these changes right now! Instead of writing you will post more often, you should post more often right now! Horaz: “Tempus fugit – carpe diem.”
I ;ike it here on this site… I am not a programmer or an extensive anything computer related…. I enjoy my computers… all macs… One thing I would like to see is a better looking side bar and nicer looking tabs etc…
I fly for a living and using Wordpress and sites like this help me immensely. I just need software that enhances and assits me.
I think the changes you mention for the site will be worthwhile in the end. I have been redesigning my site over and over and still cannot come up with a design I am 100% happy with. But I keep working at it.
It’s the easiest thing to leave on the backburner but when you get around to it you’re glad you eventually did it.
I think the one biggest problem with designing/upgrading your own site is oneself. For me, it would mean second guessing my choices and ending up tweaking it for 2-3x the amount of time. Then I would get into the must-have features treadmill and that just causes another slew of problems. I think a well written plan is definitely going to be helpful in this situation, especially because its your personal site.
i also use all-in-one seo pack but i dont know if it will be compatiblw with wp 2.7. its new owner doesnt reply to people’s questions and this is really a shame. indeed, when it comes to updating wp it is always a pain in the butt as far as plugins are concerned!
Not sure why you mentioned all in one seo pack here(?), but just found out about a
plugin that does what all in one does and a significant amount more, I’m
switching over to that now. Called WP SEO Master.
Mike
PS – I rather like the theme now as it is!
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