Yeah! It’s done! Well, is a web site ever done? Don’t answer that! 

It’s live, anyway. I’m pleased with the general look, though a few of my visitors may feel lost for a while! The design was focused on creating something new & unique that would be identifiable with this site, as well as functional. I dropped a few items on my earlier to-do lists after review, and have delayed others. In the coming weeks I will point out how certain things were accomplished, the plug-ins used, and all the details.  For now, I’m just going to sit back and relax a bit, and focus on why were all right blogs–the content!

I invite feedback on the new look & feel of the site. Please leave comments and share what you think. I know there are some little glitches that showed up in the launch, like that Technorati Rank graphic not wanting to center… it is on my server at home! That’s strange. But, now that I can sit back and take it all in, I can focus on fine-tuning as we go. Thanks for being patient while I got this completed. I look forward to hearing everyone’s comments.

Well, I thought I was going to make it tonight, but I guess not. Most work is done, but I decided to change the approach I was using on the CSS tabs… So, it’s taking me a wee more time than I planned to get that just right. Everything else is ready, except the last minute things like dropping in the stats tracking codes. I want to save a copy of the theme without the codes, so it could be distributed if someone actually liked it…

While my own site isn’t ready, we did have a successful switch over to our new site design at work, so at least something went right today! Look forward to finishing tomorrow…

I’ve made good progress on the latest to-do list:

• Review plugin use and confirm all are setup
• Make notes of configuration changes that need to be done inside WordPress admin tool after installation of the template
• Setup tabs with rounded borders using graphics
• Check pages for IE support code & GIF graphics for rounded corners
• Add Latest Posts to sidebar
• Widen sidebar
• Finalize color choice in post metadata
• Consider post date ‘calendar’ format graphic or color change
• Expand About page content
• Posts by Category page needs format still
• Posts by Date page needs format
• Custom Category Templates for each of standard categories (Tools & Techniques) with header lead-in to content
• Update blogroll and breakdown by category, perhaps using built-in link management system?
• Add RSS Feed icon & links near top & remove from footer
• Confirm RSS auto-discovery code is in header
• About section in sidebar, with photo?
• Ranking links (Alexa & Technorati)
• Blogflux links (uptime, directory, mapstats)
• Feedburner chiclet
• Stats link codes
• SEO code
• Review online version for customizations to back-port to new design
• Affiliate links (Sedo) others? HitsLink?
• Last 50 entries on Archive page
• Mullet Home page?
• Review for standards compliance

I’ve made good progress, so I should be able to launch the new design tomorrow night. Funny, we are also launching a new site at the university tomorrow night–luckily I’ve scripted that so it should only take a few seconds to cut-over to the new design. We are just planning on doing it Sunday night so it will be up Monday morning when people come in as was announced. I guess you can consider this blog the same way! Weekends are normally a slower time for views of the blog, especially on Saturday, though this weeks stats are looking pretty good! Hopefully my visitors on Monday will have time to leave comments on the new design. I’ll do a launch post when it goes live tomorrow to celebrate the launch, then Monday I’ll post a specific request for feedback. I’ll really be glad to be able to get back to thinking about content, than about the design and structure of  the blog, though that’s some of what I will be doing! Keep watching…

Here’s where we are so far in our progress on the earlier established to-do list:

• Install copy of WordPress on development box
• Import backup of live site content to provide some content for the development site
• Create a bare-bones set of template files
• Review the default CSS before beginning development of custom CSS for new template
• Setup CSS for basic layout
  • 2-Column wide left, narrow right, approximately 75% - 25% split
  • Site width: 1024px (current width ~800px)
  • This gives almost the same relative widths as the current template, but with an increased overall width, resulting in a wider left column (and right) to give more room for graphics & code as desired.
  • Header will be short, ~ 5% +/- of screen height
  • Footer will be one or two text lines
• Select color scheme
• Select photo / graphic / logo for header and develop site-wide navigation in header

I’ve accomplished all the items on the initial plan! Until I was writing this, I hadn’t realized that all the original goals had been accomplished. That’s nice to realize! Goes to show that putting your plans and goals in writing and monitoring them can sometimes lead you to see progress in areas you didn’t realize you were making. That’s a subject for a whole other post. Too much philosophy for this one!

While I have accomplished the original goals, it does not mean that I haven’t changed and/or expanded on them while in progress. Or there may be some minor implementation issues left to finalize.

Here’s what I see still needs to be complete before launch of this redesign:

• Review plugin use and confirm all are setup
• Make notes of configuration changes that need to be done inside WordPress admin tool after installation of the template
• Setup tabs with rounded borders using graphics
• Check pages for IE support code & GIF graphics for rounded corners
• Add Latest Posts to sidebar
• Widen sidebar
• Finalize color choice in post metadata
• Consider post date ‘calendar’ format graphic or color change
•  Expand About page content
• Posts by Category page needs format still
• Posts by Date page needs format
•  Custom Category Templates for each of standard categories (Tools & Techniques) with header lead-in to content
• Update blogroll and breakdown by category, perhaps using built-in link management system?
• Add RSS Feed icon & links near top & remove from footer
• Confirm RSS auto-discovery code is in header
• About section in sidebar, with photo?
• Ranking links (Alexa & Technorati)
• Blogflux links (uptime, directory, mapstats)
• Feedburner chiclet
• Stats link codes
• SEO code
• Review online version for customizations to back-port to new design
• Affiliate links (Sedo) others? HitsLink?
• Last 50 entries on Archive page
• Mullet Home page?
• Review for standards compliance

As you can see, even though I have accomplished a lot, there is still much to do. But, most of it is little stuff in general, the details you don’t see or think of, until you get farther along in any project. This is one of the reasons project planning is not an exact science. While an architect can design a house, the carpenter that builds it still have to make a lot of decisions on how to implement the design. Here, I’m the designer and the carpenter.

I’ve been working on finalizing the new template tonight. I’ve got all the secondary pages (archives, blogroll, about) updated to use the new design. Simple really, just add a new CSS class where it belongs, and all is done naturally! That is the way CSS should be used. Of course, I created some new template pages, one as a customized archives page with a few tweaks, and I decided to move the blogroll to it’s own page. It was just too long for the sidebar. I do plan on shortening it… I can’t keep up with them all now!

This leaves me more room in the sidebar for other ‘toys’, or affiliate marketing links. I might make a ‘top 5 of the week’ selection of blogs that make the slot with extra promotion. Lots of opportunity now that I have the space.I’m not sure everyone will like my color palette choice, as it is a departure from most sites I see with lighter palettes or midrange brighter colors. I know I didn’t want black, but I wanted something ‘earthy’ to go with the header photo. I was also considering a deep blue theme.

This pass was more about getting into the architecture of WordPress and seeing what is possible at the simple level. Once I have it live, I can describe some of the details on how things were done. With the primary arrangement complete, I can tweak as I find it necessary. Us techies can’t keep our hands off the engine…  But, this is my ‘daily driver’ too, so I don’t want to wreck it! Came close earlier tonight on the development box… my screen went solid green! More about that when we get back to the program. Hope to take this live over the weekend.