Three, that's the magic number
I was reading some news about what is planned for WordPress 3.0 and 2010, the new default theme, and I realized it’s been over a year since the last redesign. As much as revamping the site is a chore, things change and new features arise.
SS!AB is a pretty large and old site (as far as anime blogs go anyway), which poses challenges for navigation. We can’t simply just list all our archives directly on the side, and it can be a pain to sort through the archives.
If there’s a feature you’d like to see added to the SS!AB design, please let me know in the comments!
Things To Add
- Custom Menus: This is the feature that excites me the most about WP 3.0. This will eliminate multiple plugins from our list, and will greatly simplify adding more effective navigation. This could make it easier to list out current series being blogged, without having to wrangle a lot of code or screwing around with category hierarchy. Too bad I’ve heard that this feature might not quite be ready and might be pulled back till 3.1 or so.
- Drop-down Menus: I am going to wait and see if I want to go with a child theme of Thematic or 2010, but either way I think it’s time to utilize drop-down navigation. This has become much easier to do in recent years, so I’d like to try it out.
- Author Profiles: When I go to other team blogs, sometimes I cannot figure out who wrote the article. Then, sometimes it’s difficult to connect with all the various authors. Now that we have so many authors, I might make a little author blurb be a part of each post.
Other Notes:
- I expect that the overall look of SS!AB will remain similar. Unlike changes in the early years, the last few iterations have retained the blue and green color scheme that I’ve come to associate with SS!AB. I’ve been trying to build the brand of the site, if you will, and I think our mascot, Nama-ko, should help that. I like the size of the various blog sections (fits nicely on my 1024-pixel wide netbook screen), the front will mostly be a freshening up with some revamped navigation.
- One of my main goals is making older content easier to locate.
- I am experimenting with conditions on ads to hide them for regular visitors (who generally never click anything anyway) and show them more obnoxiously for people stumbling upon the site from Google. Smart Pricing is a biatch for sites serving ads. This could be a win-win for regular visitors and SS!AB, as it would free up a lot of sidebar space and make the site look better without decreasing overall ad revenue. Interestingly, it also decrease the page loading time by 60% as ad fetching was a bit of a bottleneck.
- It might be a while before I start/finish the redesign.
This post was written by...
Kabitzin – who has written 1971 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
One of the founders of Sea Slugs, I handle most of the blog admin tasks while wearing my I AM BOSS shirt. I like my action series well choreographed, and my romance series extra trashy. I also have a soft spot for puns.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Well, you’ve got a lot of writers now, so it might be time to put up an actual About page. You could either do it all on the same page, or have the main page link to each individual blogger’s profile. That can help new users learn a bit about every writer and help everyone else keep things straight.
In addition to this, author links can be helpful. When I click on your name on a post, I get every post you have written for this blog. You could put those links on the side bar and then people can immediately get a list of the latest posts from their favorite writer(s). Wordpress.com has it under the Authors plugin, but I assume that custom blogs have better plug-ins or ways to do it.
This is awesome, I love the process of a redesign XD I think you should be on the lookout for more Wordpress themes, since there are a tonne of free ones that offer the services that you are looking for.
Oh and if you have any problems and such, feel free to give me an email. I’ll be more than happy to help.
Ooooh cant wait to see the new changes to the blog ! have fun with it -nod-
Whatever you do, don’t change the column size. Right now it’s just big enough so that I can read it on my iPhone if I zoom into the middle column. So no scrolling left/right.
Author profiles is a good idea as long as it’s small! Wonder if they could have our Gravitar show up beside our names.
I still remember that one redesign years ago… the one where you had that round thing at the bottom haha.. it was so ugly
Yeah, I’ll probably redesign again once 3.0 comes out, just because I think my current new design is a placeholder until I get a new (better) design. I haven’t looked at all the things that are supposed to be in WP3, but from what you wrote, it looks promising.
And yeah…I was thinking that my blog turned 4 during my last hiatus, and your blog is at least a couple years older than mine. It starts getting scary when one thinks about how long one has been blogging about this haha
Just a note: the portability of nested comments depends on the theme – lost all my nested hierarchies when I moved from Vigilance to LightWord.
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