Do Not Adjust Your Screen

For all the extra observant, regular readers you may have noticed the blog is sporting a new lay out. I've been contemplating updating the look, design, lay out and features for a long time now, then a good friends alerted me that my blog was not the optimal colour, font or lay out for 'easy reading'. Considering my main goal for this blog is for people to read it, I thought I'd try to experiment with a few new looks. I eliminated the colour background, went with the simpler black text, and changed the font and size. Though you probably noticed that without me saying.

I also changed how the comments sections works, but I avoided doing the pop up window because I am personally not really a fan of it. Instead, it allows you to comment right below the post rather than take you to a separate comment page (which I also admit was sort of irritating).

I am not 100% sure if this is the look I want to stay with yet. There are still quite a few things I want to change and tweak about the blog before it can be considered fully transformed.

Actually, I've been wrestling with the idea of going with a totally different host for my blog. At this point, I am not really wanting to spend any money to obtain my own domain name. Even though there are a lot of great, free blog hosts, I also not really sure I want to put up with the hassle, considering I would want to transfer all my old blog posts over to the new site and such things like that. On the other hand, some of the other hosts may better serve some of my more long term interests. For example, I'd rather not have a lot of different 'web sites' but rather just have one all purpose site. Eventually, I would want my blog to have a page that would contain my portfolio, and also a contact page for prospective clients. My paid writing jobs at this point are still very minimal, thus I am not in a real rush to focus on the promotional side yet. After all, the most important step for success is to write, because you can't sell things that don't exist. For the long term, I would like to be able to have a bit more of as multi-purpose site that compliments the business I want to be running.

I've also been thinking a lot about starting up a Google AdSense or a similar ad revenue gadget on this site. But considering my readership is pretty small at this point, I am not sure if there is a lot of value of starting it up quite yet. I am not sure if earning that extra quarter to lend for someone who wants to use the payphone, is really worth the possibility of alienating or bothering readers with obtrusive ads on the site. Now if I thought I could actually make a decent amount of money, and not upset the people going to this site, then I'd be much more interested. The reality is, this entire blog is about promoting myself, and eventually my writing, and if that takes off, I can probably avoid ever having to need ads in the first place (other than direct ads that would promote that non existent, best selling novel).

Anyway, this rant is all designed to inform you that the blog may continue to change over the next few days or weeks. I spent a few hours on it last night in order to get it to this present form. I am sure I'll find some time to do a few more tweaks but then again, I may just decide to do what this site is designed for, which is to write (not fiddle with a bunch of things that I know little about).

I invite everyone to let me know what they think about the new lay out, and what they would rather see. Of course, I reserve the right to completely ignore what you suggest, because I can be stubborn like that.