Something I’m proud to say is that I have reached a point with the design of this site that I am happy with. That doesn’t mean that the process of tweaking it and improving stops. Not now, not ever.

Because I am happy with it, doesn’t mean it looks even close to perfect to me. There are many flaws that mostly involve consistency.

Realign, Refresh, Reuse and Recycle

I don’t know if the “Three Rs” were hammered into your head to help save the environment (or something like that) while your were young, but in essence the ideas were a pretty solid foundation to web design.

Once the design is done, in the sense that you are happy, I like the start thinking of different approaches right away. With this site it is hard, because not much really sees a canvas in Photoshop. Most is just created live, while everything is running.

• Familiarity. With designs that stay reasonably consistent in theme and colour, it keeps readers happy to see something similar, but different at the same time.
• Simplicity. I like to make things easier to get to and overall simpler every time I revise the design. This never has to mean less images or flashy elements, just improved usability. In fact, if you don’t improve on usability with a new version, that’s never very good, is it?
• Less boring. Having the same design for years at a time is alright if it has changed the web (for the better), but otherwise it’s best to keep readers awake with a little change every now and then.

Refresh Frequency

Depending on how often you post, the amount of traffic you get and how good your design is, there are numerous factors factoring into when you should change it up.

Every couple of months might be a little much for anyone, but every 6 months something new is always nice. I’m going to clean this design up next month, and though it hasn’t been long, this would be a sort of a beginning to a more regular schedule.

A Chance to Improve

A design can only get better, so there is no use in being timid about changing things. If you have a shot at it and you decide the attempt has failed, you can always revert quickly or try again. The key is not to waste your time with coding something you don’t fully believe in.

Not only on the screen can you improve, but also in the XHTML and CSS you use. Use the best structure, validate code and format it. All those things you were putting off till next time, it’s time to get those going.

Who knows? Maybe after a couple good refreshing realigns to your site it actually will be perfect.

The Twitter contest is now over, but still feel free to follow me anyway. I was doing this as an experiment to see how something like this, like blatantly asking you to follow me, would work.

Overall, there we a few new followers, but not much. I still liked the ideas. Plus, this way I can fill my lonely ad space. I’ve been thinking about scrapping it for a while, and this will give me an excuse to keep it for at least another month.

The Winners

To tickle my brain, I wrote a script to put out two random numbers between 1 and 83 (amount of followers) that were different. From there I just counted down on the page that lists all those people to find the two winners.

Coincidentally, one winner had just entered this morning, and the other had already been following my Twitter updates when this mini contest began. Because I know you’ve already skipped past this part, I’ll get right to it.

The winners are Alex (@epicalex) and Malin (@infektia).

Alex was actually the last entry, I believe. The Twitter page I used in conjuction with my random numbers (17 and 15, in case you were wondering) doesn’t order by date, though.

Claim Your Prize

Just email the advertisment (125 by 125) to me (hit the contact page for my email), preferably from the email you’ve commented with before. I’ll give you a week or so before I start proding you for one. If you want to pass the prize on for some reason, I can always draw another number.

Real content starts again this weekend, hopefully. It’s be a busy two days, that’s for sure.

Today I’d like to offer you the opportunity to snatch up some free ad space, valued at $50/month for free. There are two spots available, so there will be to winners chosen.

How to Enter

Entering this contest is simple. If you follow me on Twitter, you are eligible to win. That simple!

If you don’t currently use Twitter, it is a great service that after a while can become very useful and fun. Give it a try if you’re mildly interested, and follow me to enter!

The Prize

Two (2) winners will be selected, for one 125*125 ad spot in my sidebar. Value is $50 for one month, and the ad will run for one month. Contest ends Friday April 4th, 5PM EST. Winners will be selected at random.

Fine Print

Can’t say there is any catch here. I’m not requesting anything from you except for following me on Twitter to enter. If you want to link to this post I’ll give you an extra entry, but it is not a recquirment.

Also, this is not an April Fool’s day joke. On that note I haven’t seen a good one yet. Maybe next year.

Being critical of yourself is nearly impossible, because you will always have a different perception of your own work than others will. Though I have spent a lot of time on this theme, there are always tons of things you can do to improve.

Cliché? Yep. However, will I do these things? Eventually, yes, I hope to implement all these ideas.

1. Improve Comments

This is a multifaceted feature of every blog that always has a ton of room for improvement. First, here’s what I’m already doing:

• Separate trackbacks and comments. I show comments first, then the form to reply, and if there are any trackbacks, they are shown below.
• Gravatars. Every comment has the respective avatar showing, if they’ve signed up for Gravatar.
• Highlight author comments and alternate colours. This is so my comments stand out and there’s an aesthetic order with the alternating colours.
• AJAX editing. I just added this today. Try it out and tell me how it goes, because I can’t test it as a regular user (or at least I’m too lazy).

I’ve spent quite a bit of time tweaking my CSS and comment.php file, but especially in this part of any site there is a vast space to improve reader experience and encourage mroe comments. Here are some things I’d like to implement:

• Threaded comments. By default, these are ugly. But if I could fully integrate them into my own stylings, then I’d love to have two levels of comments. Any more gets a little out of hand, especially at the width I have for content.
• Add more incentive. There are many plugins that allow to show the latest headline for their blog, add their link to your sidebar, etc… But I’m tired of adding plugins by now. I’d want to write something my self to cut down on my already heavy server load.
• Change styling. I like the structure I have my comments in right now, but I’m always thinking it would look much better with a few major tweaks. I could even inject some colour to get rid of the grey.

There are always more things you can do to improve this area, but I’ve found you are more successful when taking a few things at once.

2. Display More Information

The DOMtab JavaScript is nice, but it can be a pain to setup while maintaining a certain structure, like that of my sidebar. I found a jQuery plugin equivilent that offers more flexibility and options (plus it’s on jQuery, so that’s even more possibilties). It also allows for multiple instances on once page with ease.

I just think that there are some things in my sidebar that don’t need to be displayed at all times. Here’s a rough draft on what could go in (bolded would be default shown if tabbed):

1. About text. Sort of necessary at the top.
2. Sponsors/Search/Stats. Two things that need to be near the top but don’t get a lot of love. Combine them! Plus that neat little stats plugin at the bottom right now.
3. Top  Commentators/Categories/Blogroll. This way the commenters get their links front and center as usual. The tabs might even draw more users th their sites.
4. Twitter/Flickr/Other Stuff lik that. Twitter is updated the most, and I could grab another feed, like Digg or something if I thought it would work well.
5. Recent posts/Popular posts. Something I really need but am lacking.

One problem here is that there would be all those tabs, which may annoy some people. I think it would be a great opportunity for me to get more useful things into my sidebar without making it run longer than all my posts.

3. Write More

When I’m busy I tend to put certain things ahead of others. This site is something that can always fall to the bottom because it’s just me. I’ve always got client’s sites that need designing and coding, and even other writing ventures.

Considerring I don’t make a single cent from this site, posting a couple times a week is pretty good in my books. Once summer comes around I’ll probably be back to once a day, maybe more. The summer schedule allows for a lot more time for me to write, which explain the awesome quantity of posts from last summer.

This is the instant way to improve your site when all else seems to be going nowhere.

I wonder what would be a better usage of time then: numbers 1 and 2, or 3?