Changes Coming Soon
January 05, 2004 12 | Comments (Closed)
In the last year or so I’ve come to realize that when Gerry McGovern told me that “you should only publish what you can maintain,” he was right on the money.
I’m cutting back on my “non-essential” content and going for a more simplified method of content management and maintenance. Most of my readers won’t notice a change. I’m going to remove “the fluff” and concentrate on my blog entries which is what most of you are here for.
I spend too much time as it is on things that, as I’ve learned via some small user studies I’ve done recently, no one really uses. I think this will make my sites better for the user and easier for me.
First off, I’m closing up shop over at Flash For The Future. It was an idea that didn’t work and so I’m killing it. I had wanted to have a community site to help promote Web standards to those folks who do most of their work in Flash. Unfortunately I couldn’t get enough people to help out and that audience really didn’t seem to want to hear it anyway. I’ve ported those entries to Asterisk*, created a “Flash” category and will continue to post about Flash here.
I’m also planning on moving my Gorilla Web Tips and Focus articles over to Asterisk* as well and retiring my DKR Productions site soon. I get most of my freelance gigs via Asterisk* and since I have a full time job I can’t take on many of the projects that come my way anyway.
I’m going to really cut back on my whole reviews and recommendations stuff. Instead of having “permanent content” here I’ll just post reviews and such in the blog. Hopefully I’ll be able to find an easy way to keep the “flavor” of that content and still keep it easy for me.
Almost Worldess, my photo blog, will go away and those photos will just roll right into Asterisk* in some manner. I may just create a few “photo/art” categories and go from there.
I’m pretty sure I’ll keep my new Q and A and FAQs section — it’s pretty easy to work with and the feedback on that so far has been great.
All of this will eventually culminate in a redesign. My hope is to wait until Movable Type 3.0 comes out, but I’m sure I’ll be doing some work in the meantime. A new, custom 404 page is something I need to tackle asap.
If you’ve got any suggestions or just want to weigh in on what you’d like to see here, feel free to do so, I’m always open to new ideas and my readers have been a real help to getting this site to where it is today.
Filed under: My Sites
Comments
1. Nick Finck said:
I am not sure how much traffic you get here, but if you are building a custom 404 page, you may want to automate it so that it emails you (or webmaster@) each time a user gets a 404. I did this for Digital Web a while ago and quickly identified about 20 pages that I removed or moved that should have redirects, etc. Of course, the email traffic was crazy so I had to turn the feature off after too long, mostly because the “true” 404s where resolved and the emails I was getting were related to typos ..like someone forgetting the .shtml or a slash at the end of the URL after a file name, or people trying to find articles before they are published, etc. Anyway, worth checking out. It can be done with a simple formmail type CGI/Perl file and a redirect. The URL would be captured using SSI.
Posted on January 5, 2004 12:35 PM | #
2. patrick h. lauke said:
sad to see “flash for the future” gone, but keeping them here will be a good compromise.
onwards and upwards :)
Posted on January 5, 2004 01:52 PM | #
3. mahalie said:
I hope after the consolidation that you offer RSS feeds by category…It’s incredible how much you can scan in a day using an RSS reader. I find that I quickly unsubscribe to general weblogs as it is just too much to sift through. Thus far, aside from your song of the week entries, I’ve found your content to be mostly relevant to web design and development, which is why I subscribe.
Posted on January 5, 2004 03:52 PM | #
4. Alex said:
I think all these changes are good! A redesign would be super-cool!
I’m glad about the web tips coming to Asterisk, because I like them, but I never read them because I never go on your design firm site.
Posted on January 5, 2004 03:57 PM | #
5. Ryan Parman said:
I consolidated all of my sites about a year ago. Now, I’m finding myself thinking about branching out again… but only a bit. If I do, it will be something is requires only a minimal amount of work.
Posted on January 5, 2004 04:40 PM | #
6. Keith said:
Thanks for the feedback and suggestions.
Mahalie - I think my “no play” feed is what you want.
It’s got everything but the fun stuff. No songs or reviews or photos there.
Posted on January 5, 2004 05:07 PM | #
7. dez said:
Sorry to see “Flash for The Future” go. I thought it was a great idea. Your site design is one of my favourites, so I look forward to see what you come up with. Also for what it’s worth I don’t think your side bar is too cluttered. I think it’s pretty well labelled and organised. But that’s just my personal preference for scrolling I guess.
Posted on January 5, 2004 10:01 PM | #
8. Bob said:
I’m also sorry to see that FftF didn’t work out. However, consolidation is often good for what ails you. I’ve just allowed one of my old domains to expire, and am considering closing two others and consolidating them into either bobsawyer.com or builtforthefuture.com. Too much clutter, too much to keep up with. Hopefully the process will be a good one for you.
Posted on January 6, 2004 08:02 AM | #
9. Boyink said:
About 6 months ago I consolodated my hobby and busines sites. While it seemed strange to have Internet, Jeep, and Photo content all in one nav scheme it sure has been nice from a management perspective.
And it’s crazy, but I’ve found that having the Hobby content there seems to help break the ice with potential clients, as it gets mentioned quite often during the initial meetings.
I guess there are worse things than to be remembered as “the web guy who’s into old Jeeps and Ramblers”…;)
Posted on January 7, 2004 12:49 PM | #
10. Scrivs said:
Hmmm, aren’t you supposed to be sticking to a yearlong pact of not changing the site?
http://www.dutchcelt.nl/blogged/187_0_1_0_C/
:)
Posted on January 7, 2004 01:44 PM | #
11. Keith said:
I never said a year without changes. I said a year with no redesign. Unfortunatley I feel that, because of the significant changes I need to make, a redesign is needed.
So, I don’t even think I’m going to wait for MT 3.0. I’m working on it now. Hopefully it won’t be huge, but I need to address some of my UI and content issues asap.
Posted on January 7, 2004 01:51 PM | #
12. Dris said:
I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with. I’d like to see more of your style; if you can’t tell, it was a pretty big influence on my latest design.
Posted on January 15, 2004 01:38 PM | #
Comments are now closed