Thank you for reading blog one another. I hope the renewed energy I am putting into writing is proving helpful. Well at least, I'm having fun! Today I want to point out some design changes I have made to this blog:
I changed the overall theme to make it easier to read the home page or any pages containing multiple postings: The text is tighter so you don't have to scroll as much, and the titles "pop" so you scan them more easily.
Did you notice the new navigation bar along the top? It explicitly lists pages that were previously kind of hard to find:
- Home
- is an easy way to get back to the home page.
- About
- takes you to my revamped "About" page. Check it out even if you know me well.
- Archives
- is any easy way to see two lists of all my posts, one by date and one by category.
- Subscribe
- takes you to a brand-new page describing two ways you can subscribe to blog one another. Not one, but two! Some of you may even want both.
Left Column
Down the left column, I list the various blogs to which I subscribe in my news reader. In the old days of blogging, we didn't have no stinkin' RSS feeds! Instead we made lists like these and called them "blogrolls," and I used to go down the list and click on each one to see if anyone had posted anything new. Now, of course, we make robots called "news readers" do this work for us. So my purpose in continuing these lists and keeping them up-to-date is so that you know who I am reading. Although I am trying to blog more regularly, gaps still occur in my posting. When this happens, I encourage you to take my "off" days and explore one of the blogs I read.
I have also rearranged the lists into new categories according the the level of face-to-face relationship I have had with each person. Online connections keep old relationships alive and enable new ones, which I continue to find amazing. But there is no substitute for sitting down together.
Right Column
Down the right column:
I updated my photo to show my change of (ever grayer) hairstyle.
I list two ways to subscribe to blog one another (see the Subscribe page for an explanation).
Not new, but moved around and worth nothing: Google search within blog one another. Looking for something I wrote but can't remember where it is? This is for you.
More stuff about me:
About Me: My "About" page again. Did you even know I had an about page? It's always been available by clicking the "About" heading at the top of the column, but I doubt that many of you knew that because it doesn't look like a link.
My Music: Until recently I listed each song and created pages within this blog. This was difficult to manage, so I pulled my recordings onto a separate blog. And it's a podcast, so subscribing will put new stuff into your iTunes whenever I post a new recording.
Twitter: jonmreid: My Twitter profile. This is followed by my five most recent Twitter Updates to give you a taste of my "tweets."
The rest of the column is standard fare but I still want to point it out:
See Recent Comments to catch the most recent conversations taking place on blog one another.
Categories shows a summary of my blog topics in "cloud" form: the larger the text, the more posts there are on that topic.
Archives: A good place to browse if you're new to my blog.
Depending on How You Got Here…
…That it, probably more than you ever wanted to know about the changes I've made around here!
If you subscribe to the RSS feed, come to the mother ship and check out the new look. It was actually Kathryn's comment earlier this month that made me realize you feed readers may not be aware of the changes. Explore, click around, and get a feel for the new layout.
If you haven't yet subscribed to blog one another, there are two options for automatically keeping up-to-date with new stuff I post here. Please check it out and give one a try. And if you need an explanation of this "subscription" stuff, don't hesitate to ask; it'll help you not only with this blog but with any other blog you read regularly.
Did you used to have sort of spiky hair? Definitely a new look for you in this photo. Thanks for the update!
Posted by: Katherine | March 29, 2009 at 09:15 AM
Yes Katherine, I adopted a hair-spiked-up style some 10 years ago, not long after we moved here. I guess I was in the mood for a change.
Thanks for the original comment you made about the design changes you noticed!
Posted by: Jon Reid | March 29, 2009 at 01:33 PM