jeffd, I noticed that the left column on your blog doesn't scroll in Chrome or Firefox so the Archives get cut off unless you increase the vertical height of the browser. The archives prior to April 2011 taunt me, just out of reach.
Sorry @Creole_Ned, you mistake me for someone who's willing to go down the rathole of Wordpress blog themes! :) I'll have a look at it tomorrow; I'm coming off of a long Dead Island jag... Need sleep!
I've found a few themes that are close enough to what I want that I may be willing to put the effort in to manually tweak the stuff I don't like about them. I consider this progress! In terms of layout, what does everyone think is desirable to have on the main page of a blog? Right now mine has the blog posts (duh) with a row of pages listed under the header (there are only four). The right column has, from top to bottom: categories recent posts links (to my neglected social media pages and such) archives tag cloud my NaNoWriMo 2012 'woo I won!' graphic (which I will probably remove soon) Ideally I think a site should balance being clean/simple while providing enough info to navigate without any difficulty but I'm undecided on what might be good to add or get rid of.
Consider also putting up a list of popular posts, if your blogging platform supports that. That's assuming you have blogged enough that it's not the same as recent posts (duh), and you feel that the popular posts are representative of your blog.
Ah, I hadn't thought of that. I have a few posts that I quite like, mostly because I did a good job of capturing a particular misadventure of mine (learning how to swim, for example). May as well highlight them over the 'here's a photo of what I had for lunch' posts*. * I don't actually do this
I've decided my blog re-design will be by committee. You guys are the committee. The pay is low (none) but you have the satisfaction in knowing you made a decision for me! First up, I'm trying to decide on an image for the header. I'm probably going to use something smaller, as much as I like the current one (and also because the current one is a pretty nature shot which reflects that I enjoy a good hike but doesn't really speak to who I am more generally). What I'm looking for are ideas on what type of image might be good to use. Or perhaps either of these from my misguided youth might work: I really can't explain what I was doing here. It was the style at the time (which is to say, none). Both have the disadvantage of not being great photos but they do capture some essence that says 'me'. Also, so as to not turn this completely into a vanity project, what are the general thoughts on header images on blogs, anyway? I like the touch of visual variety they add but I am open to persuasive arguments against them.
Plaid bicycle, and last time I redesigned my blog I killed all the images everywhere because ultimately I find them distracting.
Put an image in every blog post, even if it's just a generic category type image. Then if you use a "related posts" plugin you can use image thumbnails for them, which - in my experience - get more clicks/traffic than just text links. Also, when you share a post on a social network, it should pull the post specific image rather than just your header image for the preview.
A buddy of mine started up a blog to write about stuff we think is neat and I've written lots of content for them, including a Dishonored review I just posted. I don't have any idea of any of it's worth checking out, but feel free to do so. http://liquidelectron.org/
I refuse to use images out of principle, unless they are absolutely necessary. My motto is, "Are you luddite enough for me?" But yeah, if you actually want readers you should probably add pictures.
Of course it's worth checking out. Except right now I'm changing hosts, which is turning into an excruciating experience. If anyone ever needs to hear a good GoDaddy rant just let me know. I'd be happy to let you know all about how wonderful they aren't.
Father-in-law found my blog and had a cow. So I set up passwords on switchknitter.com -- anyone interested can register and get notifications when I post, if anyone wants to read it. If not, well, I enjoy talking to myself too. :D
Just that little bit on there about me changing genders. He kinda didn't know yet. (Thank FSM I never talked about Quat on there....)
I posted in this thread earlier about my site, but since then we started doing a podcast every week about topics relating to game design and the industry. For those curious to hear how I sound when not shooting zombies or feeding the other team in LoL or Dota, here you go. Although I think I'm going to be forced to buy a headset as my voice sounds off compared to in person.
I just discovered that a simple link in a web page's <head> section can specify an associated RSS feed: Code (text): <link rel="alternate" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Kynosarges" type="application/rss+xml"> That way people can use auto-discovery of feeds within browsers, or just paste any page URL into a newsreader, without having to look for an explicit link on the web page. Blogging platforms do this automatically. Guess I should have done that years ago on my hand-knitted pages, too, when I started providing an RSS feed...
I got locked out of my google ad-sense recently and I've been trying to find a new one. I found a small list online that listed five popular ad sense programs with the first one out of business http://www.technobuffalo.com/2012/07/01/google-adsense-alternatives/ Does anyone have anything to say about these or is there a better adsense program you can suggest?
