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June 1, 2005

Another Site Redesign?

I think there's something to be said for simple, but functional, site designs. My recent redesign was fun, but I've got such a mess of things going on here that it's getting hard for me to make incremental changes. My current design is actually pretty darn inefficient when it comes to the archive pages. I know what you're thinking; why don't I just blather more and worry about the site design less? ;)

Here's what I'll probably do. I'm going to pick one of the non-standard MT 3.x styles (one that has slightly larger fonts) and alter it to match my current color scheme. That's one thing that's already simple and not broken (IMHO). Instead of adding columns and a lot of per-page content, I'm going optimize my rightbar with concise feed links, a Bloglines-powered blogroll, and links to other index pages (one for my linkblog and other headlines I currently display, one for media-related stuff - ICYG, podcasts, recommendations, and wishlists). I'm finally going to convert over to MT's support for dynamically building archive pages.

OK, this is mostly in my head. But I feel like I want to get this done before I begin concentrating on the production and distribution of the coming NFL season's BDFL podcasts. I also want to get everything tidied up so that when it comes time to find a new host next year, it'll be easy to pack up and move.

Posted by Alex Harden on June 1, 2005 9:05 PM |

Comments

Sounds like a good plan to me. Don't forget the Template Modules. I actually chose to use these instead of include files for certain areas. It makes things pretty easy to manage.

Posted by: Jonathan Smith | June 1, 2005 11:12 PM

Thanks. I already use them pretty extensively; I have 11 for this site, but that'll probably go down. I've also used them a bit on the MHS site.

One thing I'll probably do with them that I haven't really done yet is to put more conditional tags in them; that'll increase their usefulness.

Posted by: aharden | June 2, 2005 7:53 AM

Good to hear you mention getting ready for football podcasts. We started doing them late in the season last year, it will be interesting starting them early on, perhaps as early as draft night.

I found some serious bugs in the WYSIWYG editor in the Buff CMS on Brutal Deluxe. I ended up adding an editor supported by a group of guys. I have found since using a Mac though that Safari has problems supporting Javascript. Not really an issue since I am probably the only one in the BDFL that uses Safari. Anyway, looking forward to your design simplification project. :)

Posted by: Scott | June 2, 2005 2:18 PM

Yes, we will start plenty early this season. We'll definitely have to have at least one pre-BDFL draft show.

Posted by: aharden | June 2, 2005 9:43 PM

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