I look at blog design the same way I look at the opening credits to TV shows: you should update the design each new season to reflect the fact that the geeky yet handsome best friend has become the chubby yet humorous sidekick. Granted, last year the blog went through several redesigns, but I attribute that to poor ratings, budget cuts, network interference, and the fact that I totally suck at design.
So: a new year, a new design.
My design suckage notwithstanding, I’m pretty happy with the redesign. The goal was to try and maintain the look & feel of the original, while improving functionality to account for my increased online girth. Also, I felt the site needed to be a lot more equnioxy (hence, the sun/moon thingies).
To start with, I decided to increase the font size and contract the text column. The intended effect is to improve readability, because, really, if you’re going to be reading this crap then I sort of owe it to you to make it as easy as possible. On your eyes, that is (your brain is, of course, fucked).
I was never a fan of the sidebar I’d built, and I’ve always had an affinity for those Hemingway-style footers with site content in them, so if you’re wondering where the archives and things like that have ended up then just head due south. In keeping with my personality, the footer got a bit… audacious. In some cases the footer is going to be larger than the posts above it, which I find charmingly delightful, proper user interface design techniques be damned.
New features, now dumped into the footer, include: my recent del.icio.us links, Flickr photos, monthly archives, recent posts, and some of my favorite posts. I was going to add some Klingon poetry too, but, crazy as this sounds, there isn’t a Wordpress plugin for that. Bummer.
I’ve redone the archive pages to be more usable, I hope. I’ve also switched from categorical filing of posts to a tag-based system, and added a much needed, though dubiously accurate, search function. This should make finding crap I wrote easier. Because I’m sure you’re just dying to look up my old posts about Thor’s Presidential Campaign (rumor has it he’s going to jump back into the race as an Independent after the primaries).
If you’re viewing the site with IE6 then there are going to be some minor problems due to my use of transparent PNGs. Sorry. Also, you should really look at upgrading your browser to something that doesn’t, who know, totally friggin’ suck ass. I recommend anything that isn’t Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about because you’re viewing the site through a feed reader, then here’s a screenshot of the new look:
Finally, I’m working on retconning old posts to work with the new design. Older articles might look totally stupid for a while. I mean, more stupid than usual. Just go with the flow. This should future-proof the site, in the event of subsequent updates.
Have a happy New Year, and enjoy. And by enjoy I mean, try not to vomit on the new carpet. Thanks.
— Nima
PS: If you hate the design let me know. The part of my brain that’s supposed to handle good taste is broken, as I’ve previously documented.
Tags: Blog Related
Slick, yo.
Werd!
I mean, thank you.