Another month, another redesign. I think this all stems from the fact that I have never really been 100% happy with my website.

So, it is back to basics. With an update of WordPress comes their default theme, so I can concentrate on the content before I work on a custom design.

It’s all about the content

From day one, I have really used this site as a dumping ground, posting anything on here, not really thinking about the audience and so for this new era, I want to focus the content and deliver something of use (hopefully) to the people reading it.

Get out the statistics

I had never really looked into the popular sections of the site, so I dug out the page visits over the last few years, to see which elements were the most visited; here they are:

• /2010/01/19/dribbble-invite-giveaway/
• /2009/04/28/six-high-resolution-cloud-images/
• /projects/
• /2009/10/16/the-kitchen-sink-of-html/
• /2009/07/30/august-2009-wallpaper/
• /about/
• /2009/06/25/july-2009-wallpaper/
• /category/wallpaper/
• /2009/02/06/the-h1-debate/
• /2009/05/28/june-2009-wallpaper/
• /2009/10/13/good-design-is-invisible/
• /2009/04/24/london-2012-coin-design-competition/
• /2010/03/19/css3-multiple-backgrounds/
• /2009/08/31/september-2009-wallpaper/
• /2009/07/17/creativity/
• /category/downloads/
• /contact/
• /2010/01/10/type-the-secret-history-of-letters/
• /2010/02/22/should-the-grid-be-visible/
• /2009/11/15/thinking-with-type/
• /category/design/
• /2009/10/29/november-2009-wallpaper/
• /2009/01/19/if-you-make-everything-bold-nothing-is-bold/
• /2009/08/14/background-alignment-bug-fix/
• /2009/12/04/december-2009-wallpaper/
• /category/freebies/
• /2009/07/01/the-one-song-sketch/
• /2009/01/11/how-i-got-into-web-design/
• /2009/04/22/five-simple-steps/
• /2009/01/12/design-work-on-footytweets/

So, what can I learn from this:

1. Giving away free stuff interests people and drives an audience to your site
2. The ‘about’ page is very important
3. Design-centric posts are most popular

So having analysed this, I want to expand a section with HTML/CSS code snippets, further develop my profile on the site, and spend time writing some posts on design, something I have always wanted to do more of.

Timescale?

My first mistake would be to set a limit of this. The only times I have pushed the development of this site forward is during several hours at the weekends (or on a bank holiday like today). I don’t want to rush it, because the chances are that I haven’t thought about it enough, and it’ll mean I want to redesign it again too quickly, so for now, I will concentrate on writing more, and will slowly develop the plans for the site in the next few months.

Do you have to make a consious effort to not check emails over the weekend or just finish off that markup before going to bed?

I am sure that a lot of the self-employed people are thinking “that’s nothing new” but is it something you feel obliged to do, or do you feel it adds value to your service to be contactable throughout the week.

This is probably the least constructed blog post to date, but I would like to hear your thoughts on the situation.