Mar 24
I spent some time this afternoon blog hopping. Basically I started on my own Links page, went to a friend’s blog, then used their own blog-roll to jump to the next random site. Beyond the second link I didn’t know any of the authors but I was curious to see how the rest of the internet gets the job done. Expectedly there is a very wide range when it comes to blogs, the majority being the quick and dirty Xanga or Blogger pages. A lot of people use WordPress, the same CMS that powers LittleWyvern, though it surprised me just how few make the effort to customize their sites. In fairness it requires a basic knowledge of HTML to do the simpler tweaks and you need to have semi-advanced knowledge of PHP and some basic programming skills to do much more than that. Still, it was routinely strange when I would come across a blog with a custom domain name but a generic template. I would have thought that the two go hand-in-hand.
I only bring this up because my tour of the world beyond my own left me acutely aware of my own site’s random faults. Chief among my pet-peeves is a blog that feels like a blog. I hate the idea of “blogs” (and the word itself) primarily because of their ubiquitousness. These days everyone is doing it. That in itself is fine, maybe even good, but my sense is that most of them are doing it badly. I like to think that this website is a small degree above the average – not in traffic but hopefully in terms of overall quality. Despite the occasional Update Drought I actually take this site very seriously. And while I can’t do much to immediately improve the quality of my writing I am certainly able to address any issues with this website’s appearance.
For the most part I don’t want this blog (fine, I’ll say it) to look or feel like a blog. Just as I don’t write posts about what song is on the radio or which kind of burrito I ordered for lunch, neither do I want my website to be physically littered with blog clichés. Even having a sidenav is a major compromise for me – I did that for you, people! Still, it bothers me a lot. Specifically I don’t like the standard listing of recent posts. I understand that it is useful, but it just feels so simple and typical that it very nearly ruins the site for me. Suggestions on a better way to present that info? My poor attempt so far involves using pathetically non-clever titles for each section.
I played around with the comment listing this afternoon and tried to come up with a more aesthetic presentation. Thoughts? My personal opinion is that there are just too many words in the sidenav and it distracts from what I want to be the focal point of the site: the actual blog entry. What I liked best about my old look (the green Elvish style) is that the entries were front and center. It felt like a journal, not like a blog. I want to recapture that feeling while also giving you the quick information access that you were missing. But how?!
With that in mind some other recent updates to the site include the addition of Previous/Next links at the bottom of individual entries, comment links at the bottom of each page (I know how much Brian hates having to scroll back up), and the removal of my RSS links from the sidenav (I put the link in my footer instead).