More Simpler, More Better
If things look different around here, you may remember that I mentioned several days ago that Transformatum was undergoing a live update. During this time I have also been following Shawn of Lo-Fi Tribe and Ben of openswitch as they recreate their blogs into tumble-hybrids (a cross between a blog and a tumblelog). This style of blogging is more like a controlled stream-of-consciousness and less like publishing a magazine. It did not take long for me to realize that I was already moving down this very path (blogging half the time and twittering constantly).
After asking some questions, I decided that I wanted to follow in Ben and Shawn’s footsteps (albeit a little more slowly). Starting a couple days ago I began digging into the guts of this somewhat unfamiliar blog theme. There is still much work to be done to make this a tumble-hybrid, but I am pretty happy with the results that you see now. Gone is the sidebar. Gone is all the extemporaneous and distracting stuff (reading, listening, del.icio.us links, etc.). Center stage are the entries. Not only does it draw your eye to what is important, but it is also in keeping with the spirit of the Arts & Crafts design theme — form following function.
So welcome to the new blog digs (a far cry from the 3-columns of last year). If this works, then I may have to change my tag line to “putting the log back in weblog.”
I like it. but yeah, get some sleep.
did you know you can set up your del.icio.us links to publish auto publish once a day (or a week) as an entry in your blog? It only publishes new links that you added that day. But it seems to follow the tumblelog approach as I understand it (this is the first time I have seen that term).
@bob: Thanks. Yeah, I was pretty tired this morning.
@alli: I didn’t know that, but it sounds like something I’d be interested in. One of the blogs I read has a sidebar section called “A la Carte” where the author posts 3 – 5 external links with short descriptions. You can comment on the entire entry, not the individual items. I wonder if he’s using something like del.icio.us for that?
Awesome, Scott! I can’t wait to see the finished product. If you need help, shoot me an e-mail. Peace.
I’ve really fallen in love with blogging again thanks to the simplified format. You may find that it’s too simple for you, or you may really like it.
Yeah, you can use the XML-RPC feature in WP to have del.icio.us post a daily digest of all your links to your blog automagically. It’s pretty nifty. I’m pretty sure too that you can do something similar with flickr but that I’m _really_ not sure of.
At any rate, I really like this design. It’s nice and easy on the eyes. Very nice.
Oh, and I think you’ve done well with sprinkling the ads and the twitterings throughout the main page. hmmmm. I may have to “borrow” that idea.
@ Ben: I think I’m going to really like it, too. And as for “borrowing”, it’s not like I haven’t done the same.
Right now the Twitter status and ads are hacked into the WP Loop to display after the 1st, 3rd and 5th posts. Flickr photos are outside of the loop, right above the footer. I think I’m going to keep it that way even after I style the various TH entries (photo, quote, link, etc.).
I’m currently using a plugin called “the_excerpt Reloaded” to truncate all of the entries. The first entry was already styled like that when I started to mod this theme, except the image said “Fresh.” I think I may go with that look for all of the traditional blog posts.
Two things are delaying the progress right now: 1) not enough time lately and 2) can’t decide if I want to switch to TXP. I think that using “sections” instead of “categories” to define my TH entries is a far superior method. How difficult is the learning curve on TXP?
@ Ben:
Well, now that I’m using a modified Matt’s Asides technique to style the individual posts on the main page, the technique I was using to sprinkle the ads does not work. Unless I can figure it out I’m going to have to put the ads in the footer or perhaps on the indivdual blog post pages (wonder if that’s still in keeping with the TLA terms of service?).
As far as the learning curve for TXP, it’s not too great. You’ve still got the same concepts as with WP but they’re just accomplished a little differently.
By the way, I forget where you and I talked about it, but it seems from this thread on the Sandbox forums that you definitely can use this ’sprinkling’ method with Sandbox.