Retro-planning, Retro-fitting

I’m not the best planner, and sometimes it gets me into trouble. Whether it’s because I didn’t pack everything I needed for a trip, or because I didn’t consider my blog layout throughly enough. ;) Either way, I find myself back-tracking on occasion. Owning and maintaining a blog has also been a learning process with regard to design, simply because I haven’t always been able to pinpoint exactly what content I should be displaying, or where. So here I sit after only six weeks, contemplating a realign.

It’s okay though, because without learning from one’s mistakes, there can be no progression. What you see above is a sketch I did for the home page of my proposed realign, with special attention paid to the placement of navigation, ads, and popular posts or downloads.

The outcome should closely resemble the sketch, with variations on subsequent pages of course, such as a possible listing of recent items by Category rather than chronology. I’m still weighing that idea. I’m also considering a middle section between the main content and the extended footer, which would house feature content or possibly sticky posts. Something like that. Anyone else using a similar layout which has been effective?

As it is now, the design feels to me like it has too much whitespace, and the sidebar “modules” such as Snapshot and Related posts seem like they’re floating out in the middle of nowhere. Because I’m fond of the overall layout, I want to keep things pretty much as they are, but with a tightening up of elements.

While it’s mostly small tweaks, hopefully this realignment will make better use of screen real estate, and allow for easier maintenance and addition of more features as DA grows. Oh yeah, and hopefully I can actually code the darn thing! My stylesheet is just a tiny bit complicated right now. That’s another reason for the realign. I’ve got to wrap my brain around the CSS mess I’ve made, and clean it up. :)

I don’t know for sure when I’ll have this done. Between motherhood, writing, and outside projects, I’ve got a full plate. I’m aiming for June 1st. If things go well, I’ll be simultaneously releasing a new section of DA as well. More will be revealed pal.

Do you have any thoughts on how DA could be improved? Are there any topics you’d like to see more articles on? Any features you’d like to have incorporated? Is there any interest in seeing the current version of DA released as a Wordpress theme after the realign? Suggestions are welcome.

Tags: organization | planning | site-management