I’ve got to ask…

Sunday, August 31st, 2008

If you’ve visited this site before, what do you think of the design changes I’ve made this past week? I wanted to address the ‘information overload’ common not only to many blogs, but a lot of other websites as well.

As with our homes, it’s much better (in my view) to have most of our clutter tucked away, and so I’ve hopefully managed to keep all the necessary stuff that people like—the archives, recent comments, latest entries—easily accessible, but hidden away until you actually want to access them. What’s more, I’ve actually managed to provide more links than previously to short asides in the right-hand sidebar (three instead of just the one)–although this change has involved doing away with the idea of presenting them in full, and instead providing extracts instead to entice the reader in to get the full story.

There’s a new, decidedly iPhone-ish, version of the MyBlogLog Recent Visitors widget, and anyone visiting the site on an iPhone or iPod Touch now benefits from a completely different, fast-to-load, design theme, making viewing and commenting on the move so much easier. Sticking with the subject of load times, I’ve found the site when viewed on a computer (well, for me, that’s the iMac and MacBook Pro) is also much, much faster than it was before the changes. But I’m keen to find out if that’s your experience as well.

Last but not least, while the front page now displays just one main entry—whichever is the latest one to be posted, instead of three or more—you can find a much longer list (double, in fact, compared to before) of the most recent content to have been published in the left-hand sidebar. It’s my hope that the site is now more inviting, less overwhelming to a first-time visitor, easier to navigate, and more attractive and cleaner in aesthetic terms.

The one thing I’m undecided about is whether to continue with site registration as a requirement of anyone wishing to leave a comment. Registration is free, and easy, and quick to accomplish, with no strings attached, but it is nevertheless off-putting for some people. Are you one of those who doesn’t like registration? You don’t need to register to let me know—you can drop me a line using the contact page instead. I introduced site registration to combat everything I posted being harvested by sploggers to reappear on the crappiest of thrown-together fake blogs. It must be said, registration did cut down on over ninety per cent of the content theft that was occurring. But it also cut down on new commentators as well, although readership itself was unaffected. Should I take the risk and open the gates? Or stick with it?

Let me know YOUR views. Blogging is a personal thing, of course—each blogger is king or queen of his or her own domain, as it were—but without readers, I kind of think, where would we be? I love getting feedback and so keeping you, the reader, happy to return time and again is very important to me. I don’t know if I’m achieving my aims unless you tell me. So please do!

categories: all wired up