Tales of a Designer

Planning a Redesign

Over the past few weeks, in my down time, I have been thinking about ways to redesign this site. It’s been pretty successful for me since I first put it together last summer, but now I am ready to move on to new things. Since I finally have some down time from working on another project, the only thing I can think about is redesigning this site, however, I want to make sure I do it careful, and plan well.

I start off first by looking at my current design and looking at the things that I don’t necessarily like. At this point, it would have to be my two side bars. When I first made this site, I had reason to fill up both [right] columns with content, but now it seems that the site doesn’t need two columns, and some things can go.

My ‘daily visits’ will be departing. My regular visitors probably already know what sites I go to, and I regularly link to them in my posts anyways so I think those will go. I might also change the nav to be horizontal so that I can free up more room to be able to condense the current sidebar contents into one column without making it look cluttered.

I would also like to widen the content area a few more pixels. With that done, and one side column, I think the visual focus will rest a little more on the content and no be distracted by all of the content taking up the two side bars that are currently there. I also plan on changing the look of the comments. Not that they are used a ton, but whenever I read comments on this site, they seem to run together with solid differentiation between each commenter. That needs to change.

My portfolio page needs to change. The lightbox feature has been broken for some time, and it’s been annoying me. So the next version will different, or maybe a whole other site linked from here.

The one thing I definitely will not change is the ‘Distractions’ section. I find way too many good reads around the web to not want to share them, so those are here to stay. So if you come here for anything, check out the distractions, and then of course you can read some of my posts if you like.

Alot of these features that I’m phasing out are personal choice, also mixed with things that I pick up from looking at my web stats and noticing how people are using the site. So if you don’t currently have stats on your site, I would highly suggest it because it’s good information to gain on your site, as far as how people get there, where they click, and how they leave.

So basically what I’m trying to say is that I want to change the architecture quite a bit, then throw some spit and polish into the design to shape my next design piece. I still plan on keeping it simple like I like to do. I more than likely will still have a good piece of photography for the header as well. I have no time frame at all when all of this is going to happen. I just wanted to let you know where my head was at! I will keep you posted. And there will be non of this live-redesign business that has been floating around. It works well for some, but I’d prefer not to!