KZBlog

If you’ve been visiting the site over the past few days, you might have noticed some changes. I’ve been tweaking a few things that I’ve meant to get to since I first moved to this new site and got this new theme.

This entry is sort of a changelog of what I’ve done, what new problems I’ve introduced, and what I still want to do. So if you’re not a blog designer there’s really no reason to read the rest of this entry. If you are a blog designer and can help me figure out how to get the rest of my to-do list done, I’ll love you forever.

What I’ve done:

• Set up a default image for the lead article so if the most recent post has no image associated with it, the default image comes up. Thanks Timthumb and catch_the_image!
• Added icons for RSS, comments counts and Twitter from one icon set
• Added Twitter and Google Reader feeds
• Changed the meta tags on posts to a different color so there isn’t too much red on the page and so they stand out from other links.
• Reduced some of the clutter from the post page so it looks a bit cleaner.
• Moved some things on the side bar around a bit
• Simplified my color scheme by reducing the number of colors–and generally went for more saturated colors. My pastel phase is over!
• Moved author, category and tag info to the post excerpts on the front page
• Made some round corners for most of you–sorry IE users
• Made the earlier posts/go to archive link a bit clearer i.e. it no longer looks like part of the last post on the page
• Made the rankings at the bottom (Google Page Rank, Alexa, etc…) hidden on load up as per instructions here. I figure most people aren’t interested in that kind of stuff and also the widgets are often slow to load. So my Alexa rank on the widget is usually worse than reality (not by much).

Annoying things that cropped up in doing all that which I must someday fix

• In Firefox now the meta data on the front page is double spaced!
• I think I have a bunch of css in my stylesheet that did nothing but I forgot to delete. Need to clean it up someday.
• Anything else you have noticed?

To Do/Wish List

• Make lead post selector exclude posts by category or tag. I.e. I don’t want tweeted posts to appear as the lead post

You can look at my source code to see how I did it, but basically I made two loops. The first one looks for the most recent post not in category “About KZ Blog” and puts it in #lead. Then I have another loop that looks for all posts regardless of category. Thanks to The WordPress Codex for a neat trick to make sure the leadpost isn’t repeated below!

• Fix the Googlereader feed so the links are normal. Right now they are adding the domain to the end of the link

Using Googler Reader Clips. If you go to Google Reader->Settings->Reader Settings->Folders and Tags, then choose a folder or your shared items and select “add a clip to your site” on the right side of the page. Adds a little javascript widget. Only have control over number of items, and to include source or notes. There’s a limited number of color schemes too. But the links work and they don’t flow out past the box!

Recommended Reading: Google Reader Shared is a good tool if you want to show only shared posts. It didn’t work for me because I wanted a complete feed, not just shared.

• Figure out how to refer to widgets individually through css so I can change the background of some of them or add icons to the titles or something
• Win Pulitzer Prize for blogging
• Steal Underwear. ? Make Profit!

Also see Set Up Page for everything I’m using on here,