RodeWorks

I think I’m getting ready for a new blog look — this one has served me well, but I’m getting a little tired of it.  I’ve also grown concerned that readers will have trouble finding posts.  So I’ve made a couple of changes that I hope make finding things easier:

1. The search box has moved to the header — even I had trouble finding it before in the sidebar
2. A new tag cloud is in the sidebar — This tag cloud plug-in comes from silev.net.  I like tag clouds, as I’m not really a very good organizer.  Or I’m good in short burst, but I change my mind over time.  So tag clouds’ dynamic style suits me.  I also like the font-size as an indicator of frequency for words.  Its a good visual organizing technique.
3. I changed the archive listing to a drop-down box.  I’ve got posts stretching back to 2004, and the archive listing was getting much too long.  Short and sweet and easy to manage — that’s the way I like it!
4. Now when you view a full post, it suggests other related posts for additional browsing.  This adds a layer of serendipity that I hope will help a reader discover additional posts of interest.  It utilizes a nice related posts plugin.
5. And I don’t know why its taken me so long, but I’ve added a cache plugin to help the loading speed. I’ve always felt the blog loaded a little slowly, and this seems to help.
6. I cleaned up the e-newsletter subscribe box, so that it fits in properly with the rest of the theme.  This utilizes a great service from Feedburner.
7. I cut the number of posts displayed to 6 to shorten the page a bit.  And the main pages utilizes the Evermore plug-in to automatically list just the first paragraph.  It lets me keep the main page short without the bother of manually inserting the <more> tag.  For the reader it makes it easier to browse the latest posts.
8. Finally I moved the RSS icon down to the footer.  I’m not really happy about that, but I figure people in-the-know already know how to subscribe to the RSS feed.  And those who don’t know won’t know what the icon if for anyway.  And I couldn’t figure out how to elegantly fit it anywhere else.

So now that I’ve got the functional things where I want ‘em, its time to work on the visual look.  I’m off with the family to New Hampshire next week, so maybe I’ll make it a project to start tinkering around.  Or maybe I’ll just enjoy the vacation!  We’ll see…