Articles on blogging and related topics, usually not on the topic of web design.
I don’t know how many times I’ve redesigned this site over the past 4 years, but here’s another one, just launched this morning.
Layout-wise, there’s nothing really all that different. It’s more of a different skin than anything, and (out of sheer laziness) the comments and footer area have pretty much remained the same. Basically, I got tired of the dull looking header/sidebar in the previous design and wanted something cleaner and with a little more color.
We should be past this type of behaviour already. This industry should be about sharing, learning, and growing in knowledge. But too often we do things that allow these areas to be stifled. And it turns people away, causing newcomers to become discouraged and not want to voice their opinions and questions for fear that they’ll be labelled “stupid”.
Of course, we’re all going to slip up in this regard to some degree. I’ve answered people’s questions on this blog in ways that some people thought were rude and condescending. It wasn’t my intent to do that, so I’ve tried to do my best to apologize and keep the conversation going.
Comment spam is still a problem on many blogs, including this one. Fortunately, WordPress’s Akismet plugin does a great job at filtering out most of the worst offenders.
But there are still some “gray-area” spam comments that I’ve tried to deal with. For me, this less-obvious type of spam has the following three characteristics: