…and this time it’s personal.

Another month, another redesign. I think this all stems from the fact that I have never really been 100% happy with my website.

So, it is back to basics. With an update of WordPress comes their default theme, so I can concentrate on the content before I work on a custom design.

It’s all about the content

From day one, I have really used this site as a dumping ground, posting anything on here, not really thinking about the audience and so for this new era, I want to focus the content and deliver something of use (hopefully) to the people reading it.

Get out the statistics

I had never really looked into the popular sections of the site, so I dug out the page visits over the last few years, to see which elements were the most visited; here they are:

• /2010/01/19/dribbble-invite-giveaway/
• /2009/04/28/six-high-resolution-cloud-images/
• /projects/
• /2009/10/16/the-kitchen-sink-of-html/
• /2009/07/30/august-2009-wallpaper/
• /about/
• /2009/06/25/july-2009-wallpaper/
• /category/wallpaper/
• /2009/02/06/the-h1-debate/
• /2009/05/28/june-2009-wallpaper/
• /2009/10/13/good-design-is-invisible/
• /2009/04/24/london-2012-coin-design-competition/
• /2010/03/19/css3-multiple-backgrounds/
• /2009/08/31/september-2009-wallpaper/
• /2009/07/17/creativity/
• /category/downloads/
• /contact/
• /2010/01/10/type-the-secret-history-of-letters/
• /2010/02/22/should-the-grid-be-visible/
• /2009/11/15/thinking-with-type/
• /category/design/
• /2009/10/29/november-2009-wallpaper/
• /2009/01/19/if-you-make-everything-bold-nothing-is-bold/
• /2009/08/14/background-alignment-bug-fix/
• /2009/12/04/december-2009-wallpaper/
• /category/freebies/
• /2009/07/01/the-one-song-sketch/
• /2009/01/11/how-i-got-into-web-design/
• /2009/04/22/five-simple-steps/
• /2009/01/12/design-work-on-footytweets/

So, what can I learn from this:

1. Giving away free stuff interests people and drives an audience to your site
2. The ‘about’ page is very important
3. Design-centric posts are most popular

So having analysed this, I want to expand a section with HTML/CSS code snippets, further develop my profile on the site, and spend time writing some posts on design, something I have always wanted to do more of.

Timescale?

My first mistake would be to set a limit of this. The only times I have pushed the development of this site forward is during several hours at the weekends (or on a bank holiday like today). I don’t want to rush it, because the chances are that I haven’t thought about it enough, and it’ll mean I want to redesign it again too quickly, so for now, I will concentrate on writing more, and will slowly develop the plans for the site in the next few months.