After reading Steven Garrity's intelligent review of the new blogger templates, I gave some thought to the current design of the site. I especially appreciated his comment that the design should not compete with content. Looking at my old site design, this was clearly happening.

The most interesting things were happening in the sidebars in comparison with the rather boring text in the center. Also, the text seemed like it was completely surrounded by clutter, with random pictures on the left and tons of text on the right. It was just too darn busy! I also came to dislike an idea I was originally excited about - filling the right column with pictures and albums that could be changed by each regular (or, ahem, irregular) contributors. The fact is, they got changed about three or four times in as many months, and that's a little boring. I did not do away with the "Photo Mojo" section. You'll notice it's there, but much smaller in the upper right hand corner.

I did like including pictures from "the wall" in the old design, but in order to implement a fluid design (which was requested by a couple of mathcaddy regulars) I chose the easy route of ditching the header pic and just keeping the sidebar image. I think it still works.

I still feel like the site needs something else and I'm not totally pleased with the way the comments section looks right now, but I am overall happy with the design. But don't be surprised to see some changes here and there.

Posted by Adam at May 17, 2004 05:43 PM