9 Blog Redesign Ideas

We are few days away from redesigning this site. Here are few thoughts on what we want to achieve with this redesign effort. I think they will be useful to anyone looking for redesigning their blogs.

1. Faster page load times. We want low computational overhead for generating each pages. This requires eliminating unnecessary or marginally useful plugins. Over the years I have gathered quite some experience with what works and what doesn’t. A lot of plugins were shown the door and more will be in the coming months.

2. Simple look and feel. The site should be very simple and intuitive to navigate. The site should be a destination, not part of the journey

3. Light Javascript effects. We will not overdo on Javascript effects. And I don’t want to include the heavy prototype library..maybe prototype lite. However some Javascript effects add a nice touch to interactivity of the site.

4. Clean, uncluttered look. Currently I think simple thoughts is rather cluttered. We have simplified it recently but still a lot needs to be done.

5. Make it easy to subscribe by email or RSS.

6. Recognize site members for their comments and suggestions.

7. Make it easy to share articles. Share this by Alex King is a step in the right direction. However it includes the heavy prototype library. I want to create a custom wordpress plugin to have the features of Share This but without the heaviness associated with the prototype library.

8. Identical look and feel across browsers, specifically Firefox, Internet Explorer 6 & 7.

9. Full HTML & CSS spec compliant. This is more of a perfectionist goal. I don’t have hard numbers to support the value of compliance. Google Webmaster guidelines does recommend compliance.

Note: The problem with any such redesigning is that for few days or even weeks thereafter Google AdSense is very likely to behave erratically (almost always bad, never in a good way) before it stabilizes. For some reason Google don’t like drastic changes to large amount of content from the same site.

Any suggestions to improve are welcome.