DM Blog

I have decided once and for all, that I will be re-designing my blog. (Traffic to my blog is substantial enough to justify working on it, and of course, making changes.)

But before I can do that, there are a couple things I need to do, that I should have done a long time ago. The thing is, I have made so many customizations to my blog, both in terms of its design and functionality, that I'll have to do a lot of work in order to carry those modifications over...

After a little bit of thinking things through, I realized that what I should have done in the beginning, instead of modifying the theme's PHP code, JavaScript, etc., is create my own WordPress Plugin so that modifying my theme in the future isn't such a chore... (That way I can change themes on the fly without having to worry about porting over any modifications.) At the same time, while I've already created a couple custom shortcodes that I use on a regular basis, I could obviously use a lot more to make posting to my blog a whole lot easier...

So, while it will involve a lot of work in the short-term, it should make switching my theme in the future, a breeze. I'm also hoping that, with the addition of a whole bunch of custom shortcodes, it will be a lot less-tedious of a process to post to my blog. Nevertheless, I think I'll still continue to hand-code all my entries and do my own image cropping and resizing, etc. (There are also a couple new WordPress features as of the newly-released WordPress 2.7 that I would like to take advantage of.)

Change is good, but change also inspires more change ;-) I've also been thinking about focusing my blog a little more and trying to stick to a certain topic... While I enjoy having a blog about everything and nothing, I know that if I really want to increase my readership in the long-run, I have to focus on a specific topic a lot more, and take more risks by offering my opinion... Hm. So the question is, what should my blog be about? Suggestions are welcome!

If you have any suggestions, comments, advice, guidance, etc. about what direction to take my blog in the new year, or suggestions on how to improve my blog's functionality and design, please let me know by posting a comment. Even if it's just a suggestion about a color scheme or fonts... You can also look through the various themes in the Theme Directory at WordPress.org and let me know if you find something that stands out...

I'm setting myself a very modest goal of having all the changes completed by January 1, 2009...

You can post a comment below to let me know what you think.