After looking at this site over the last 2 1/2 years and maintaining the same template for much of that time, I think it’s time to make a few changes. However, at least for the time being I’m going to keep the same template but rearrange some items and perhaps take advantage of some new opportunities which have been laid before me.
When I upgraded the site to WordPress 2.5, I found out that it changed my link list in two ways I don’t care for – they became alphabetized rather than random and the descriptions became items only visible when one’s mouse hovers over them. All the while, the other beef I had with this particular template was that my link categories also appeared alphabetically, which made me have to be creative in order to arrange items as I wished.
What I think I’m going to play with over the next few days and weeks is reordering the site to place my political items in the left-hand column, manually rewriting the code for links if I have to, and keep the non-political links and items to the right column. I’m also going to expand the scope of linkages to include more races (which is why I want to be able to determine the ordering myself) and begin working on additional pages for items I’d like to maintain for readers’ easy reference. (I’m working on three new pages which will debut tomorrow.)
Now maybe there’s some code wizard out there who can tell me how to do this and make my life easier, but failing that possibility I’ve managed to make this venerable template work thus far and I think I can squeeze a little more life out of it. At some point in the next year I’m sure I’ll go to a new look, although I’ll probably keep a similar color scheme. No hot pink here.
The commentary will remain the same, though – even though some may find it boring and/or call me stupid, people still come here to read it and they’re not looking for the proverbial 14-car pileup.
I do feel a little bit snubbed, though. In an otherwise well-written and thoughtful five-part series on the state of Maryland blogs on the Maryland Politics Watch site (as an example, here’s part 5), writer Adam Pagnucco looked at readership on the conservative side in Part 3 and didn’t include me! In truth, I think I had my Site Meter data hidden for part of that period and that’s probably why. I can safely say that my totals for May would fall in between the Howard County blog and Annapolis Politics, numerically a little closer to the former. My peak would have been earlier – thanks to the Rushalanche last October – and I think that number would rival the other two five-digit figures shown (but make my May dropoff look that much more severe.)
Anyway, aside from not chaining the parts together for easier reference, Adam has put together a nice brief overview of Maryland’s blog world worth checking out as a primer.
I did not mean to snub you, but your sitemeter stats are not public. If they were, I would include you.
The blog series is linked by the label “blogs.” Click on that label and all five parts will come up.
Adam Pagnucco