{"id":16329,"date":"2012-07-04T05:38:59","date_gmt":"2012-07-04T10:38:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=16329"},"modified":"2012-07-09T12:23:07","modified_gmt":"2012-07-09T17:23:07","slug":"this-dang-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=16329","title":{"rendered":"This Dang Website"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been thinking about what I need from this website, what it needs to do, and how I’ve been running it. As I’ve sketched things out, I’ve come to realize why I haven’t been able to make a design that really works. The problem is that this thing is incredibly complicated<\/em>. It didn’t start out that way. This blog began life as a simple little thing with a minuscule audience, no content, and a very narrow focus. As it expanded, the site design has failed to keep up.<\/p>\n

For years I’ve been underestimating the problem because, hey, it’s a WordPress blog, right? How hard can it be? As it turns out, wrangling seven years of mixed-media content into a convenient, readable, and intuitive interface that works on desktops and mobiles, is useful to everyone (newcomers, regulars, and archive surfers) doesn’t overwhelm the reader with too much data, and doesn’t look like complete ass is difficult bordering on the impossible. <\/p>\n

Reader Strangeite pointed out that a good website needs these skills, in this order: Good interface design, good graphic design, and good coding. My skillset is the reverse of that, with most of my skill points dumped into “coding”. <\/p>\n

In the past, I’ve solicited feedback on this, but I was frustrated because each person told me how to make the site more useful for them<\/em>, which would almost always result in making it less useful for someone else. This was my fault, because I hadn’t properly defined the problem. So let me try to draw a picture of all the stuff the site needs to do. <\/p>\n

For the curious, I’ve outlined everything the site needs to do or show. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Site functionality.<\/h3>\n

Obviously the most important things are the basic features that readers will expect to see on a blog or other frequently-updated website. <\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Posts. The post area needs to be 600 pixels wide. 600 is the magic number. Less, and too much space is wasted on a desktop LCD. More, and the site is a nightmare for smaller screens and portable devices. Yes it must be 600 and I’m never changing it so don’t ask. And no, making it “variable” isn’t a solution, it’s a system for making it look awful everywhere. You have no idea. Your particular jumbo-resolution dual-monitor setup is not the center of my universe. I’m looking at you, Josh.\n<\/li>\n
  2. We need the ads, somewhere near the top, if we want to pay the bills.\n<\/li>\n
  3. Search should always be available.\n<\/li>\n
  4. People need to be able to browse by category or date.\n<\/li>\n
  5. I like having the links to other websites.\n<\/li>\n
  6. The RSS links need to be available and easy to find.\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Important content<\/h3>\n

    Over the last eight or so years, I’ve made a truly astounding amount of content. This is incredibly valuable. Letting a new reader know about my past work can make the difference between “rabid fan” and “person who maybe heard of Shamus Young and might have read something he wrote a couple of years ago”. The way my website is now, it’s a bit like a Disneyland where you can’t see anything beyond the visitor’s center and the front gate. <\/p>\n

    I need a way to let visitors know about all of the following stuff in an engaging way, and without devouring a bunch of screen space and getting in the way of people just here to read the latest post.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. My books\n<\/li>\n
    2. Spoiler Warning\n<\/li>\n
    3. Webcomics\n
        \n
      1. DM of the Rings\n<\/li>\n
      2. Perhaps also Chainmail Bikini\n<\/li>\n
      3. Perhaps also Stolen Pixels.\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
      4. The four big programming series: Terrain, Pixel City, Frontier, and Octant.\n<\/li>\n
      5. My various videos, particularly the Reset Button series.\n<\/li>\n
      6. Perhaps a link to my “best” posts – stuff that was a big hit, but which wasn’t otherwise part of a series.\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Other Information<\/h3>\n

        On top of all of the previous stuff, we also need some additional information for people who want to go beyond the site itself or connect in some other way.<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. Contact info – People sometimes need to email me.\n<\/li>\n
        2. Ask me a question – It’s nice for people to be able to start a discussion without thread-jacking and without resorting to email. If you really want me to write a post on the new D&D edition, you might not want to email, and there might not been an appropriate place to ask about it on the front page.\n<\/li>\n
        3. Donate button needs to be where people will see it, but not so prominent that it gets in the way or feels unseemly. Specifically, people should NOT see the donate within the first ten seconds of their visit. Asking for donations before you’ve given people something is a big turn-off. On the other hand, its sort of pointless if it’s buried.\n<\/li>\n
        4. Minecraft Server – It’s a sister community. Or a spinoff community. I don’t know how I’d classify it, really. But it works best when visitors to the server come from the site, which means we need a way for them to learn about it on the site.\n<\/li>\n
        5. Twitter feed – I actually use Twitter a lot for thoughts that don’t justify full blog posts. A lot of people will want to read that stuff, so they need to know it exists.\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          This is a lot of information. It all needs to be on the page, somewhere, in some situations. On the other hand, this site serves a lot of different visitors:<\/p>\n

            \n
          • Post-specific newcomers<\/strong> – If I write an article that is widely linked, new people will show up for that one specific post. These people likely have no idea who I am or why they should care.\n<\/li>\n
          • Newcomers to the site<\/strong> – These people know who I am, but they’re new to the blog. Maybe they read my content on The Escapist, or my book, saw or my YouTube videos, etc. These people are here looking for more content, or information about me.\n<\/li>\n
          • RSS Viewers<\/strong> – I don’t use an RSS reader myself, so I often forget about these folks. They read the posts in their reader. They don’t comment, they don’t see the various links in the sidebar or the menu on top, they don’t see any of the cosmetic features of the site, and they don’t see the ads. These people are like ninjas, viewing the content without leaving any trace.\n<\/li>\n
          • General readers, regular visitors, and archive surfers<\/strong> – The people who read the site and perhaps even leave comments. They need the various search tools and a robust comment system, but they know about what I’ve done and how to find it.\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

            We could quibble about some of these or divide that last group into sub-groups, but I think I’ve made my point. There are different visitors with greatly different needs. <\/p>\n

            Over the past few months it’s been a regular part of our morning routine: My wife gets up, makes tea, turns on her computer, and is aghast at the latest nonsensical interface change to Facebook. The site is regularly updated. The coders are writing new code and functionality. But this results in changes, not improvements. Things keep moving around as the site tries to be all things to all people at all times. It’s madness. It’s exactly the sort of thing I want to avoid on my own site, which is why it’s so rare that I change things. <\/p>\n

            Having said all that, I think I am ready to make changes if I can find a good design. If you’re curious as to why the site has always seemed a little wonky, now you know. If you’re interested in helping, then the primary thing I need is UI help. I don’t need a new blogging platform, or new graphics, or a new theme. Those are superficial changes. What I really need is a way to wrangle all of this information and make it fit without overwhelming the user with extraneous clutter. This is something that can probably be accomplished with a notepad and a pencil by the right person.<\/p>\n

            Now would be an excellent time to bring up the parts of the site that don’t work for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

            I’ve been thinking about what I need from this website, what it needs to do, and how I’ve been running it. As I’ve sketched things out, I’ve come to realize why I haven’t been able to make a design that really works. The problem is that this thing is incredibly complicated. It didn’t start out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notices"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16329\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}