Earlier this week I pushed an update to the design of this site. Visually not a lot has change, but I reworked a bunch of little things. Notably I changed how the site displays the post metadata.
I was never happy with this part of the design before so I’ve been rethinking it. Now you see the post type (e.g. Quote of the Day, Linked, Article) at the top followed by the author (if necessary), reading time (for articles), and date. I really like how this looks — though some tweaks to the space between the metadata and the post title is needed.
Also, if you are wondering, the date serves as the permalink if you need it for quotes and linked items.
In the footer I added a popular post widget and some links to other stuff I am up to. The goal there is just to consolidate my presence and hopefully show some trending stuff — no matter how old the post is. (That home screen organization post is always a top post for some reason, I love it and it may be the geekiest thing I do. I also have an update coming in that front.)
The biggest design change happened on the single post view. Here I added a bunch of, well, crap. This site has been suffering from declining visitors, and declining revenue, and say what you want about it being about the “content” — sometimes you also need to get the word out. That’s my goal. I’m not married to having social buttons, and related post links, BUT thus far these items have tripled incoming social referrers.
So, yeah.
Oh, and I quite like the related posts deal from Jetpack ((A real bitch to style.)) , it’s fun for me to see other posts on a topic. Really fun actually. So whether it helps with traffic or not, I’m keeping it for my own enjoyment.
Let me know what you think of these minor changes and remember this site’s design is always a work in progress. This latest update takes me to my sixth version — or sixth version that I feel wants a version number increase.
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