Sometimes it just goes to show that no matter how much time, effort, and preparation you undertake in a task there is always something wrong that happens. I spent the past month and a half working on a new design and a layout. It’s what I do when I’m not raiding or farming.
I just finished transferring the files from my beta subdomain and it is now officially live. But I’m a little disappointed because some things don’t seem to work the way I want it to. Instead of the new layout being polished, it’s a little rough around the edges.
Changes
So what have I done to my blog exactly? I’ve made it look simpler and complicated at the same time. The design and look has a lot more white space. There isn’t as much clutter or noise. It’s also more complicated in the fact that I’ve stepped up some functionality.
Front Page
Hey! Where did the blog on the front page go? It went here. The front page is now static instead of having new posts dynamically changing. The front page now contains my favourite articles on the right and a listing of recent posts or pages on the left. Those of you with RSS readers (Google reader, even) will be unaffected.
Blogroll and links
I have way too many links on my blogroll. The stupid Google Reader export plugin doesn’t want to cooperate. My plan B? I installed an addon that harvested every link on my blog and displays it neatly on a new links page. I’m going to start getting in the habit of posting new blogs that I run into or posts that drill a point.
Article Selection
For the moment, I’ve put my favourite Priest and Raid Officer columns up as links on the front page. You can click on the tabs to choose between the two topics. I plan on adding more later. The articles there are what I consider the best I have to offer on those subjects.
Advertising
They aren’t really ads per se. Those are just affiliate banners of companies that I’m presently using. I wouldn’t recommend them if I didn’t like them. If you want a more detailed explanation on why I’m running affiliate banners and information on the companies themselves, please read more about my recommendations.
Categories
I’ve cut my categories in half. I’m going to axe some more tomorrow. Right now as it stands, there’s a lot of categories that had 1 or 2 posts in them. My intention is to combine them all in to broader categories. This is one of the fatal errors that I’ve made in my blog. I didn’t give proper thought to the kind of topics that I would cover. Now I’m stuck with having to go through all my old posts and editing what category they belong under.
Archives
I think I’m going to do away with chronological archives altogether. I don’t know if anyones ever used them. I suspect that you, as a reader, would be more inclined to browse through my older topics via topic or category instead of month.
About Page
Updated the about page with a better picture of myself, a description of me, and what this blog is about.
Contact Matticus
Created a new contact page which offers multiple methods for you to contact me including a spiffy email form (because Outlook takes forever to load, right?). I don’t mind emails. In fact, I encourage them! Sometimes I’ll even post up a few on the blog here to help answer some questions.
I’m just getting warmed up. This is my new look for the new year. Let me know if something breaks or is non-existent or gets pointed in the wrong direction.
It’s 3 AM. I’m going to bed. I have this feeling when I wake up I’m going to get a dozen or so comments either a) liking the new look b) hating it c) finding some error. I look forward to it (after precious sleep).
I love this layout. Its easy on the eyes, and is nice and clean. 🙂 Usually I like the Categories and Archives on the side, but this is the first time I have seen them used (effectively) at the bottom of the page.
Great Work!
Great new layout! Logged on to check of your latest musings and stumbled onto a brand new look and feel of “Matticus”. Very cool.
Very nice!
Me Likey!!! Very clean, very neat and organized. Excellent job! Is that the Cathedral in SW on the header image?
Great job, Matt.
Thanks for the approval guys! It’s reassuring 🙂
Galadria: Yes, good eyes. I was originally going to use a snapshot of Earth from space for the whole “world” thing.
Kulrayk: I’m still debating the archives on the bottom. I may end up creating a second page and putting something else in that slot altogether. A lot of blogs I noticed have categories and such on the side. I wanted more white space, so voila! Down it goes.
*sigh* No rest for the weary.
Well I personally love the header. Using just that bit of the SW Cathedral makes you have to look closer…makes your eye get drawn in. I like that! And on such a wonderous and starry night…
Magical 🙂 “M”
love the new layout 😀 I’m really intrigued with the theme you’ve used… mind telling me what it is? 😛
It’s much cleaner, easier to read… did I mention I love it? 😀
Marylin:
http://www.briangardner.com/themes/vertigo-blue-wordpress-theme.htm
It’s a heavily modified version of Brian Gardner’s vertigo blue theme. I’m not kidding about the heavily either. I think I doubled the CSS file size.
Wow, the new layout is amazing. The wider space for the blogs takes advantage of my (weird, I know) 1792×1344 screen res and actually fills it instead of having massive blank white spots on the sides. Honestly, I don’t know about the categories at the top. As Kulrayk said, I usually like them on the side, but as I haven’t tried browsing with them, they might end up working really well.