As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been working on a website for a local chapter of a professional organization. It took more than a month of bumbling around trying different WordPress templates before I found one that I decided would make a good foundation. Unfortunately, I spent a lot of time experimenting with Sandbox , a blank-slate theme is designed to be 100% skinnable using only CSS. So one would upload Sandbox, then one would install the custom skin that uses the Sandbox templates. The benefit of using Sandbox is that the code is well written and includes plenty of classes useful for your skin. After spending a few weeks trying different skins, I concluded that the whole thing was too detailed and that I needed to take a step back. After doing that, I found myself quickly settling on another template and everything fell together relatively quickly.
The benefit of working on another site from the ground up has been the ways it has show me how I can improve Flametoad. Some of you are reading this on LiveJournal and rarely or never visit the site. Others of you–roughly 20–are subscribed via RSS. For the longest time visitors using IE6probably hit the site then gave up in frustration before being able to subscribe. That’s because the entire menu isn’t showing up. 31% of my site visitors come using IE, but 100% of my RSS subscribers are using Firefox. That’s a problem.
All of this leads me to think that it’s time for yet another site redesign. I know, I know. I just redesigned the site not that long ago. All I can do is say I’m sorry. I was going for a more minimalist look, but I’m just not pleased with the result. The IE6 menu thing is another serious reason to redesign the site. I have some neat things I’d like to include in the sidebar, and I’d like to try a better footer.
One thing that I’d like your opinion on is whether to monetize the site. I’ve thus far resisted posting Google Adwords or the like on this site. It’s my personal soapbox/watercooler, and I find Adwords themselves ugly. While I wouldn’t mind a little extra money, the traffic through this site is fairly insignificant. On the other hand, what does it really hurt? I’d say more than 75% of the blogs I visit have ads on them. Perhaps if I just put them on archive pages? What do you think? Should Flametoad dress up like a sandwich board?
While we’re at it, are there any other design matters you want me to consider? Is 3 column okay? Should I move some of the sidebar stuff to a footer? Now’s your chance to influence the next iteration of the Flametoad site.
“One thing that I’d like your opinion on is whether to monetize the site.”
I considered putting ads on my own blog some years ago, but rejected the idea. The reason I started blogging in the first place was to provide a place where the students from my charity self defense course could ask questions and receive unbiased advice. Since I wouldn’t have been able to control the content of the ads, it seemed that I would be advocating or endorsing products and services that I might not agree with.
But you don’t have such constraints. I think that blog ads might not do any good so far as added income is concerned, but they certainly wouldn’t do any harm.
James