Bring on The Blogging

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

I recently received a text message from my friend, Wes, that asked me when I was going to get back to blogging. One of the personal projects littering my to-do list was to get a redesign for my personal site so that I could start pointing people there with pride. The last design on this page was something I hacked together in Drupal – and while the basic template I started with was OK, what it became looked like Frankenstein’s monster.

Given some experience around working on a few WordPress sites (SWSF, HHU, WA) and the new job of my friend Marianne, I knew it was time to make the switch. It’s just the best blogging platform I’ve tried (which are: Drupal, MovableType, and Blogger). That was a few months ago, and this weekend, I finally got around to doing it. This new theme is beautiful!

So, I owe a few seconds of thanks. First to Wes for the kick in the pants, then to Marianne for the inspiration, and finally to Derek Punsalan for creating such an awesome theme.

For the blog, I’ll be trying to keep it updated with a good mix of both well thought out and half baked ideas; for most posts – I’ll follow the intention behind Michael Gruen’s “word sushi,” if not the rule.

As for design, I’ve identified a few things I love about this template.

LtR navigation. Content on the left, other stuff I’m creating in the middle, and finally things I recommend on the right. The recommendations should be well thought out by me and easy to add to, but additions/changes should be rare as I want to be sure it’s worth recommending. Having to create an image to recommend somethig accomplishes that naturally.

Color Seperation – My creations are black and white, the recommend images can be in color – esp. if I didn’t create them.

The tagline at the top is a great place for expansion (favorite quotes, personal taglines, etc).

The post layout itself is elegant.

The small comment bubbles highlight changes or activity without calling too much attention to the fact that my blog isn’t highly trafficked. The titles are clea, the text is comeptitive enough to be able to hold your eye with decent ease (not perfect, but good-enough).

I might end up moving the share this icon to the right side – but it would then be easier to confuse as part of the preceding post, and I don’t love the date placement – but I can’t think of a better place to put it. I’ll also need to fill in or parse down the menu bar contents, that blank space is an odd size. These are small issues in an overall beautiful design. I may begin to add more content to the middle column, as I’ve done with my twitter updates, but I think it’s important to keep them text links to maintain the look of the site.

OK, so I’m happy to show off the site and now I’ve got an easy medium to express some more lengthy thoughts (as opposed to: tumblr, which is to be inspired and to post inspirational or important ‘quick links, cheap shots, bon mots‘ — and twitter, which is for keeping people up to date on my life and my thoughts).

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people