Sunday, December 30, 2012

Dreaming of Design

I spoke about rewriting completed works in my last post, and I kind of look at rethinking website design the same way.  When I originally designed this blog, I knew next to nothing about how to design it or what I wanted it to look like.  Yes, I knew I wanted an archive of my old posts available, as well as a preview of blogs I thought were good along the side, but that was about it - I'd never really sat down and thought about how it should evolve.

Well, at the one year mark, I know I need to do that, and I have the same dread I did with rewriting the first chapter of Akeldama.  The website works just fine, so why should I go in and start fiddling with it?

However, doing so is what professionals do.  There are things I'd like to change slightly in the way this site is laid out.  Not much, as I like the way the posts are easy to read for the folks who stop by.  However, one of the things I'd like to do is change the links across the top(of which I now have only one, and it leads back to the homepage).  Nicole Pyles over at World of my Imagination has a lot of stuff I'd like to emulate - a bio page, a link to novel previews for books I've written, a "contact me" button, etc.  Joe Peacock and Robin Weeks have similar, if smaller, toolbars at the top of their blogs.
(Time to move around the pieces)
Unfortunately, I don't yet know how to do such things.  I know that I can play around with the design long enough and figure out how to link in other pages I want to create, but I've been a lazy bastard and not spent the time necessary to make it a reality.  Truth be told, in addition to be lazy, I have little confidence in my website design capability.  I am decidedly not technologically savvy, so I'll have to really put in some time to figure it out(to give you an idea of how technologically behind the times I am, I still have a flip phone from 2005, and I enjoy it).

Additionally, I need to go back to adding more pictures.  For reasons I've explained before, I do not use random pictures from the web to help make funny points or better illustrate what I'm trying to say, even though it would be very easy to do so.  Up to this point, I've been shamelessly stealing photos my wife has taken, and she hasn't always been happy about my doing so, telling me I need to "take your own damn pictures."  She has recently gotten a new camera and has bequeathed me her old one, and all that is holding me up is getting off my lazy ass and taking pictures myself.

As a corollary to taking my own photos, I want to add a new banner photo to the top, and I need to spend some time figuring out what that should be.  When I first began, I wanted a cool picture up top, but since I have no desire to owe someone I've never met thousands of dollars in copyright infringement penalties, I decided to alter that dream.  I think a banner picture would add life to the site, so I have to figure out what to add and then snap a pic of it.

Anyone out there got any suggestions for a better layout for me?  I'll listen to anybody...on the understanding that your advice is free.  :-P

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