This New-and-improved Side of Glory?

  • tsog-redesign-funk.jpgWell, phooey. Greg’s been after me for some time to redesign the blog, because the ver­sion of Word­Press I’m using here is get­ting out­dated, and also because he can think of all kinds of ways the blog would ben­e­fit from a new look.

    I’ve been resist­ing, because I’m capa­ble of get­ting gen­uinely fond of any­thing that’s been around for a few years — kind of the way guys get about their favorite shirt, even when it’s so tatty it’s hardly hold­ing together.

    But the old girl (mean­ing the blog, not me) is start­ing to show her age. Some of the blog’s work­ings are a lit­tle prim­i­tive, and now all of the sud­den, the “Read more” func­tion isn’t work­ing right. So I lose that vital abil­ity to hide from the gen­tle read­ers just how long of a ram­ble I’m about to go on. This is fatal to some­one as long-winded expres­sive as I am, so it looks like I’ll have to dig in and redesign the site.

    That’s all well and good, but Greg keeps point­ing me to how blog sites are now, which is much less mono­lithic, much more about every­thing all the time. For exam­ple, HERE’s a tem­plate that we’re going to use for our busi­ness Web­site. The new think­ing is appar­ently that your blog needs to look like a news­pa­per page, with many points of inter­est. The prob­lem is, I’m only one per­son, and I can’t imag­ine fir­ing on all those cylin­ders all the time. Grace on News of the Day! Grace on Places to Go and Things to See! Grace’s Tips on What You Can’t Live With­out! I’d feel like Oprah Win­frey, except with­out the bankroll.

    Feh. I like sim­ple stuff. I would just as soon have things look less like an entire amuse­ment park and more like the one or two bor­ing rides in the park that never had a very long line in front of them. (I was a big fan of “Great Moments with Mr. Lin­coln” and “Rocket to Mars,” for you vin­tage Dis­ney­land atten­dees.) That sounds like some­thing I wouldn’t be too intim­i­dated by, but I admit that it might well win the cov­eted Dullest Blog Award. (And in case I need to say it, the com­pe­ti­tion for that is fierce.)

    While I’m at it, though, it seemed worth ask­ing if there are reader issues you think I should address, like how com­ments are han­dled or whether or not my blogroll has ani­mated emoti­cons (um, … no). Or blog fea­tures you think I should look into.

    I’ll be on the case, which means it should hap­pen in the next year or so, unless I flake on it even longer.

    (P.S: I seem to have found a workaround for the ‘Read more’ func­tion, so I’ve bought myself some time. Huzzah!)


    Related posts:

    1. The rays of rav­ish­ing light and glory
    2. Five years of This Side
    3. A splen­did exhibit at the Getty Museum
    4. About those ashes
    5. And speak­ing of Harry Potter …

    September 23rd, 2010 | Grace | 8 Comments |

8 Responses and Counting...

  • Anam Cara 09.23.2010

    I’m per­fectly happy with it the way it is now.

  • DebD

    I don’t embrace change either. Heck, I still can’t get over the “newer” ver­sion of War­craft. ;) I don’t get the news­pa­per look either…perhaps that is more for pro­fes­sional blogs/websites?

    The only func­tions I tend to use on other people’s side­bar is the “Recent Replies” and very occa­sion­ally the “Blogroll”.

  • s-p

    I actu­ally have a com­pletely new blog on a Word­Press plat­form, had it pro­fes­sion­ally designed with lots of cool stuff and it is sit­ting with all the posts etc. exported to it etc., while I still post on Pith­less Thoughts. I just can’t bring myself to make it pub­lic. I know there’s a LOT of stuff I could do with blog­ger that I don’t do already. I’m kind of the opin­ion that “con­tent is king”, no mat­ter what your blog looks like, if peo­ple like your stuff they’ll visit it and com­ment. Isn’t that the point?

  • eliz­a­beth

    yeah… I am not big on change either… I din’t even upgrade to the new blog­ger when every­one else did! Din’t seem worth it as they all seemed to have prob­lems with it… for me sim­ple is good… :)

  • Grace

    Okay, so I’m sens­ing that we’re all a bunch of sim­ple­tons together. I’m with Deb that I don’t even fully under­stand how that multi-track look is sup­posed to hit you, but I just feel con­fused. I don’t know where I’m sup­posed to look, which may be a plus on a com­mer­cial site because the intent to to make some­body feel like there are all kinds of good­ies there. But on a hum­ble ama­teur blog … well, maybe I’ll try to steer Greg toward the old-fashioned.

  • Word­mama

    I can see the value of the multi­grain — excuse me, mul­ti­track — approach for com­mer­cial sites; you’re try­ing to grab the fleet­ing atten­tion of peo­ple who don’t really care and make them give you money. But that’s not what you’re about, and that’s not who your read­ers are. One idea, fully explored, with the occa­sional illus­tra­tion, that’s your milieu, and for that you don’t need side­bars, laser shows, and a rock band in the corner.

    On the other hand, you *do* need the “Read More” func­tion back. Does the new soft­ware allow you to keep it sim­ple? I fol­lowed your link but couldn’t under­stand most of it.

  • Greg

    (Mut­ter­ing at every­one on this thread…) Plas­tics are the future, peo­ple! The future!

  • Dana

    Grace, I think con­tent is king as well and I’ve loved your con­tent for a long time. I do want to say, how­ever, that I moved my blog to Square­space and I love the plat­form. So easy to use and it has all the com­po­nents I would want. Every so often, I think about a re-design (mine is only a year old), but I don’t want to ago­nize over it (this from a per­son who painted a large color swatch on her liv­ing room wall and left it there for six months try­ing to decide if it was the right color). :-)

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