Design and UI Updates

I wish I could take credit for the layout, but it’s a combination of the renown WordPress K2 system with Steve Lam’s TrueBlue template . Until tonight I hadn’t understood what the hype was about with the K2 theme. It’s much more than a theme however. It’s a entire system for handling the wordpress interface that allows for declaring much of what was static before as modules that change as themes change. This means that for all the changes that were made, I didn’t have to hardcode any html or css (aside from the little “framed” class I have for my images that I like). One of the biggest advantages for me is the ability to control exactly what shows up on the sidebar, and not just on the main page either. You can specify a sidebar the main page, archives, the error page, single posts, search results and static pages (like about, projects). This brings a whole new layer of flexibility that wasn’t there before. I think it needs a few more personal touches though. I’ll try to snap a pictures from my back yard this weekend for a nice header image. This was a good opportunity to clean up the way I handle catagories and tags. There is nothing I find more annoying that viewing a weblog only to see a list of 50 categories without, usually even without a counter by them. Usually when I access a blog I like to know what the blog is about as quick as possible. One of the best ways to do this is looking at the categories, so it helps for them to have some answers. I’d like to keep categories to broad topics that I frequently write about. For a more in depth answer to the question “What does he write about?” you can also look at the tag cloud that shows up on just about the same pages. Tags include the much more specific topics of posts — Coldspring, Model Glue, Prototype, jQuery, but also include the category names. Even though there is duplication, this approach made the most sense to me. Not many people will look at the tag cloud in depth, and I don’t expect them to. Just glancing over it what I’d expect, and if from that they see the top two or three topics that’s enough information for them to know where to look for more. Typically if something wants something specific they’ll search for it, but if someone wants to read through the tag cloud at least they’ll know it’s there.