Time for a revamp #2
Wow, I never expected so many comments on my previous revamp post! There were enough suggestions made that I decided to address them in a fresh post rather than just a comment… hence this.
So, in no particular order:
Categories - I like them a lot (dunno to what extent Blogger can do them though; I know I had to go through and categorise all my posts when I migrated to WordPress) and I will duly (and soon) move the categories widget higher up.
For the Technical Writing and Book Reviews categories in particular, I’ve also created separate pages which list the post titles - they’re accessible from that little menu bar just under my title. I’ve come to realise that the text on that is really tiny, and I should definitely make it more obvious in the new template.
Pictures and breaking up the text - I’ve thought many times about adding in more images. I haven’t done it for two reasons; one being the copyright issue on images and the second being the fact that this is a blog about words, after all!
But you’re right: this blog is very text-intensive and I do think it would be a good idea for me to start adding more pictures in though. I do have a couple of (paid-for) CDs of stock photos, so I could start picking through those to see what’s suitable.
However, I definitely will not be putting in adverts to separate out my blog posts. No way. I’m not trying to make money from this blog, so my Amazon affiliate stuff and my little Google adsense is all that I ever want to have in terms of advertising. (I’m not counting Entrecard in that, because it’s more of an extension to my blogroll.)
Blogroll/links - I’m not sure why I don’t like the term blogroll. I suppose it’s because, although I’ve been blogging for about 6 years, it’s something that’s fairly new to my vocabulary and I just think it’s clumsy. WordPress has dropped its use too, in the latest version (2.5) of the software and now just refers to ‘links’.
In addition, I have my links list split into three parts - authors, blogs of note, and general links, and I think I could probably cut down on all three.
Other stuff - no-one mentioned my gi-normous tag cloud! Maybe you all ignore it because it’s too big and skeery, or else you don’t see it because you’re only looking at particular posts - it’s a sensitive little tag cloud, you see, and only shows what’s relevant. I sometimes think it’s way too big and needs to be pruned even just by removing the tags with only one entry. It does show a very good representation of what I read, though! Any thoughts?
Anyway, you’ve all given me plenty to think about, so thank you! I might not get round to redesigning this site as soon as I’d hoped…
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on June 17th, 2008 at 7:53 am
Hi Catherine, you can always use Creative Commons licensed photos. I tend to use Flickr as my first port of call. When you do a search there, go to advanced search and check the box (scroll down) that says search only Creative Commons photos. Basically some you can alter and some you have to use as they are without alteration, and you do have to acknowledge the source.
Wikipedia have the same - Wikimedia they call it - but you can find them through Wikipedia. Click on a photo in an article and it will open up and tell you its licence. Obviously there aren’t nearly as many as in Flickr but you can sometimes find much more specialised photos, and many in the public domain.
on June 17th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Thanks for those suggestions, A. Ken suggested Creative Commons photos on Flickr too, and these are definitely options I want to check out. Don’t expect to see pictures on every single post though - it’s just not my style.
on June 19th, 2008 at 2:22 am
I didn’t know what creative commons was, until today when I accidentally clicked on the search the internet options in the download photos template. And I discovered there were lots of pics there. The next problem was that I didn’t know how to identify the http of the specific picture so the template could open it..I am now experimenting on it. Hope I can find it quickly more than I did the discovery of creative commons.
It is good that people in here are helpful,,,pointing out mistakes, suggesting options, helping you with the grammar and English (like this blog - thanks so much ).
I have found a community of “loving” and generous people.
Thanks to all.
and thanks for the very helpful posts .
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