I’ve officially had this blog for more than a month.

In that time, I’ve missed exactly two days posting. So far, I’ve only missed one day in December. Most days I’ve had several posts. In fact, I’m quickly approaching my 100th post. I’d say that’s not bad.

I switched up the design on the top of the blog. What used to be a composition notebook is now a stack of newspapers. (Note to any of those wondering, that was actually just one week’s worth of the newspapers I’d accumulated in my office. I read four newspapers a day in print, sometimes more.) I think the newspapers hit the journalist part home more than the composition notebook did. Carl had suggested I add a computer, and I took some photos of my MacBook, but I decided my keyboard was enough for now. It’s subtle enough.

I added a calendar to the sidebar this morning. I’m still tweaking the design of it, but yeah. I also may add a few more things to the sidebar. Maybe a “What I’m reading” box, so everyone can follow along with my latest books. Plus, then I could keep a running list of the books I read and buy in 2007. (An idea I totally stole from Katie.)

I also updated the about page and the sidebar about myself. Now the sidebar is a list of random things worth knowing about me. It’s funny, but it’s a pretty quick snapshot of what I’m all about.

I am going to start in January doing a daily quote. (For those who don’t know, I’m obsessed with quotes.) I have a random quote in the sidebar already that changes with each refresh. But, I come across quotes I like every day. So, I think I’m going to start doing a “daily quote” or “daily inspiration.” It could be anything from something I read in a book to something I read in the newspaper to just a really good quote I came across. Today’s entry would be the one I just swapped into my e-mail signature:

“Fate loves the fearless.”
— James Russell Lowell

Finally, I wanted to note that now when you search my name in Google, the first result is this site. I don’t pretend to understand the inner workings of Google and how pages are ranked, added, sorted or anything. But at least now anyone wanting to know about me sees this before some random stories I wrote about May 4 for the 35th anniversary DKS a few years back. That’s reassuring.

Other than that, I think that’s all I have going on.

I was reading an article on NYTimes.com when I noticed something at the end that piqued my interest:

So, after talking with one of the reporters I met in the past few days and thinking about this, I have a question… Why aren’t newspaper Web sites more like My Yahoo! or Google’s personalized home?

Hear me out. It isn’t hard to create elements that are movable. On a very small scale, I did it with my magnetic poetry at typical. It was super easy, a little DHTML script. (Admitedly, I didn’t write the script, I found it on Dynamic Drive. I haven’t had time/desire to learn and teach myself yet.)

So, as much as newspapers are saying, “We want to give you what you want!” Why don’t they make their Web sites fully customizable? So, if sports are the most important thing to me, I can put that up top. If breaking news is most important, I can make that higher in the hierarchy. If I want to know when new videos are posted, I could move that above the blogs or columnists I don’t care as much about.

This would also give readers a reason to sign up (ask a few demographic questions, which helps the paper know who the viewers are beyond IP addresses.) People would be less inclined to use services like BugMeNot to avoid registration, if the layout/content was customized to each user’s experience.

I don’t know of any newspaper Web sites that are doing this. But it is a really good idea and I can almost guarantee it will happen eventually. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for some examples.

I’ll admit, it’s been awhile since I took on the task of designing an entirely new Web site. I figured I’m a little rusty, it may take awhile; that was why I decided to set aside time off this weekend to do so. Yet, creating the graphics, writing the HTML and coding the CSS were by far the easiest part of this endeavor…. WordPress is annoying me more than any other program I’ve ever worked with. And I can’t figure out why. I’ve never used WordPress before this site. I had mastered Greymatter, and Blogger is cake. And while my php experience is minimal, the php isn’t what’s bothering me. It’s that what should be working isn’t working. What works in static HTML and CSS isn’t displaying right. And if my MacBook wasn’t so delicate and expensive, I’d probably have kicked it by now.

So anyway, just a note to say the layout is pretty much up. But I’ll be tweaking it, and trying to figure out why the header background isn’t showing up properly for much of the night.

Despite my annoyance, I do have to say, I really did miss designing Web sites regularly. As I was trouble shooting and scanning each line for a missing quote or unclosed div, I couldn’t help but remember that my attention to detail was what made me willing and able to stay up until dawn designing and redesigning typical. Although it’s been awhile. I don’t think this layout turned out half bad.

Update: So, apparently after I worked and reworked and reworked again the code for my header and just about gave up, I got it working. I don’t know why, but re-uploading the image seemed to fix the issue. I can’t believe I just spent an hour troubleshooting something that took 2 seconds to fix. :/ Either way, my site is now up and working.

So, although I bought the domain earlier this week and I set up the WordPress blog a few days ago, it has taken me a little while to figure out the design I want. After copious amounts of time worrying how to craft the perfect online presence for myself (OK, so actually it was mostly me snapping photos of items on my desk before I went home for Thanksgiving and then sitting in my mom’s kitchen with my MacBook playing with Photoshop and worrying about fonts and drop shadows), I’ve managed to come up with a layout I like.

In my journey to this layout (which isn’t up yet, but should be up later tonight) I discovered a few things I either didn’t know or didn’t realize until I started.

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