I've got stuff to post about, but time is short and I'm feeling less than motivated, so it's time to clean house around here a bit. The look is a little old, but also a bit cluttered. I like getting a lot of info on the screen, but it's pretty cluttered now.
I made an attempt to redo the blogroll a couple of weeks ago, but I'm not happy with it. I want to highlight the sites I visit almost daily, but leave room for others as well. As it is, the 'daily' sites are listed twice, which I don't like. I'm thinking of moving the blogroll to an upper, dropdown menu just under the old 'Bird. Then I could go to a cleaner, two column look.
So, what would you my readers like me to leave alone and what should I change?
I have a hunch the type is a bit small for some, true?
What on the side menu do you use a lot? Categories? Recent Comments? Recent posts? Monthly archives?
What if the main page only had an excerpt of the article and you had to click through to read the whole thing?
I may try a whole new look based on one of the styles from the Movable Type Style Contest. Anything there (click the 'style browser link) look good to you?
Any other ideas? (I'm sure you've been sitting around thinking about ways I can make my blog look better, right?)
I tend to look at the "Recent Comments" section just to see if anyone commented since I last came by. Archives are always good, but I don't use them much. (I am actually going to get rid of the LOOOOOOOONNNGGGG list of achives on my own site and just let foks use the calendar tool. I hate that list!)
I must beg you...no, plead with you...no, PAY YOU SERIOUS $$$!!! not do use the exerpt method. But that is just my opinion.
I wouldn't change the type size. Folks can do that on their own by using the "View-->Text Size" menu option in their browser.
Just my thoughts...
Jeff - Thanks for the suggestion. How much will you pay ...
Seriously, why is that so objectionable? I'm thinking it may let some of the older posts have a longer life as they stay up closer to the top for a bit longer. Several times when I've posted twice in one day, the first post that day get's no comments, even once when I asked a specific person a question. I think folks might just miss them because they don't scroll down.
On the text size thing - Are you sure about that? Try it for me. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Hmmm hmmm hmmmmm. Doh, de doh, de doh.
See what I mean? The Movable Type CSS uses an exact pixel size for text, so it doesn't change with the browser setting. That's nice for keeping the look as you want it, which I like, but bad for folks who want to adjust it like you said.
You are right about the text size thing. Man, that's evil!
I understand about your concerns regarding double-day postings. Perhaps Movable Type has a tool that will allow you to just have the posts du juer be full length, and the rest of them exerpted?
For the longest time, I posted sometimes 4 or 5 posts a day on my site. But that was before I started deviating from the "Nothing Important" theme. Folks were used to it and knew to scroll down lest they miss out on a bit of www fun. But that is only my experience. Yours has obviously been different.
Movable Type is very much capable of doing that. In fact, my main page does that now. I've got 5 posts in their entirety and then several with short excerpts and a link. If I did it as a default, I'd use a longer excerpt.
You can do just about whatever you want with MT, I like it a lot.
Oh, and fixed text size evil? Nah, it's just a way to control the look of the site. With a variable size, the user changing the browser setting can break the layout and make a mess. I'm sure there are ways around that, but I'm not nearly that good. :-P
Folks who like bigger text most likely have their monitor resolution set lower which will make the text on my site bigger too.
It's not a MT thing either, it's just how the text size is spec'd in the CSS file.