Memoirs of an English Major

   Today, I decided to put on my blogger cap and looked at the numbers for February. Even though I don’t consider myself a pro blogger in the traditional sense, I do wonder if my site is getting readership and if I am connecting with the wider population of the web. Well, the numbers for last month have quite impressed me, as this was the month where Entrecard was in full force and it shows when my hits doubled from January. Even though I am still well under the radar for hits, I am grateful that there is some traffic and that I am connecting with other writers online in various ways. All in all, I think Entrecard has proven a good feature on my site and I will look for other ways to lead in readers, but there is a dilemma I must face. When does it go against the whole design?

   With my new design, I wanted to make sure to focus on the thing I felt made the site shine and that is the content. I wanted to make sure everything in the side bar was tasteful and worked in the whole minimalist design. I knew I wanted to keep the Entrecard widget, but the other stuff could be moved elsewhere, making the site clean and organized. In the end, I love it and really have no desire to change it. Where it gets troublesome is what I feel should and should not be on the side bar. For example, I noticed an interesting concept in linking back to people called ScratchBack, sort of combination tip jar and top links. After looking at it, I felt the concept was good, but didn’t feel that it would work in my side bar. It just felt like it was meant for another design

    It occurred to me then that I understood why I stressed so much over the presentation of the content. Like a poet does with rhyme scheme and word choice, I went through countless design concepts and even then, I didn’t use my own. In the end, I could not approach the characteristics I wanted through my own graphic design and well, I am thankful there was a design out there. Though don’t get me wrong, I had to modify the theme to be WordPress 2.0 compliant and I do plan to link to the modified code, but even that was trivial.

   What I’m saying is that presentation of content is just as important as the content itself and that a tacky design can vastly kill the content you’re presenting. One day, I’ll go over sites I feel have a great look and feel and ones that miss the mark, but for now, I felt that it was time to write on where I feel my site is at in its life span and I couldn’t be happier.  And if anyone has a great idea for something that should be on this site that fits within the theme, let me know. I’m thinking of placing a simple blog roll where links would be rotated on a weekly basis, no money involved. In any case, thanks for reading and if you have any comments on the site in general, please write them on the Entrecard page. I would really like to hear what the thought is, good or bad. Happy Trails.