Analysing The New Design

The last couple of days I’ve worked on migrating Fog of Eternity to WordPress. That job is now done, and you’ll see that I’ve used the opportunity for a redesign of the site. I’ve been really impressed with WordPress’ flexibility of design, and I think the move has given the blog a lot more scope for development. Today I’m going to highlight a couple of factors behind the design decisions I’ve made.

Highlighting the first post

The general standard for blog home pages is to show a number of the more recent posts in the main column. I decided that I wanted to give the first post more prominence, while keeping easy of navigation for other recent posts. I moved to three columns to give myself the scope to do this.

The home page only has one post as the main highlight. I’ve also enabled commenting on the current post immediately on the first page. Most blogs require visitors to browse to the dedicated post permalink before you can comment or view the discussion. My aim is to provide an opportunity for immediate engagement in the discussion.

I’ve made sure that the other recent posts are obviously available. Five posts are listed in the first column, and they are set up so that this list of the most recent posts never duplicates the post that’s highlighted in the main section. While a lot of blogs have “most recent posts” lists, I wanted to give a bit more information than simply a post title, and so used extracts from the start of the posts to act as a taster.

Making navigation simple

It’s always difficult to make site navigation interesting. It’s widely accepted that moving too far away from generally accepted standards can be ill-advised. I did want to make some changes though, even if minor, while retaining ease of navigation.

I decided that the site at the moment only really has two “core” pages: the home page and information on my design ethos. So I’ve made those the only two options on the main navigation menu in the top right. I removed the “About” page from that main menu, as I think it’s more appropriate situated in the right hand column, which might be considered the secondary navigation section of the site.

Highlighting social networking

The blog has started to focus on social networking topics more regularly, and I wanted to acknowledge that in the overall design. I’ve extended the submission options on blog posts. But I wanted to avoid what I’ve seen on other blogs where you see ten or fifteen “submit this” type icons on each blog post. Instead I’ve limited it to the submission sites I use most often myself, StumbleUpon, Sphinn and Mixx. I’ve also added del.icio.us, because although I don’t use it much myself I’m curious as to its overall impact.

I’ve made it easy to find me on twitter with a link on the right bar. An obvious RSS link is important of course, and there’s also a subscription option at the end of every blog post.

A fixed width design

I wrote recently about screen resolutions and web design. The new design is a fixed width design at 960px. I thought hard about whether to go for a fixed or floating width. Fixed width gave me the most scope to develop the overall design I wanted. Acknowledging that 800 x 600 is basically obsolete as a screen resolution meant that I could go for the wider fixed width design.

So, tell me your thoughts

It’s difficult to evaluate your own work objectively. I’m pleased with the way the site has come together, but I’d like to hear any feedback you have on the design and the navigation. I hope, however, that this article has given you a more in-depth idea of my thinking when I was putting the site together.