It’s been a long time coming but over the next couple of weeks you’ll be seeing quite a lot of changes going on. My website will be under going a big face lift. With all this in mind, should you hit an error page then I can assure you that if you leave it 5 minutes and refresh all will be back to normal. During this time I will be upgrading to the latest version of subtext of which I won’t be “tweaking” the admin area which i normally do.
Not only am I hoping to implement a new subtext skin I am also planning on making it a better user experience. As normal, daily backups will be in place so nothing will be lost 🙂 Below is a quick outline of what I am hoping to gain and change.
Current issues
YSlow Score
Home page is averaging 120k which i think is far from ideal. Looking at my YSlow stats:
Following the YSlow rules when the new skin is fully complete i hope to achieve a much higher score, this includes:
- Reduce the amount of script/css files
- Reduce DOM elements
- Compress script/css files
- Place script files at bottom of the page
Usability
This has been annoying me for some time now. Main menu isn’t dominant enough, and I don’t like the single sidebar. I have been playing about with many ideas from other designs i have seen and posts from design blogs I follow:
- Six Revisions – 50 Stylish Navigation Menus for Design Inspirtation
- Smashing Magazine – 50 Beautiful and User-Friendly Navigation Menus
- Smashing Magazine – Showcase Of Well-Designed Tabbed Navigation
- Web Designer Depot – 13 Characteristics of Outstanding Blog Design
- Web Designer Depot – 10 Usability Tips for Web Designers
- Web Designer Depot – 7 Interface Design Techniques to Simplify and De-clutter Your Interfaces
- Web Designer Depot – Simplifying Website Usability: The 3 Step Approach
Main areas that I am not happy with that will be changing
- Navigation
- Contact Form
- Comments Display/Form
- 404 page not found revamp
Re-Introducing
I will be adding back into my new skin the following:
- Gallery Loader – Subtext Galleries, using jQuery for funk
- Sharing the love
- A couple of things from – 10 quick things you can do to your subtext blog
- Out with Galleries in with Flickr
When the transition has taken place and you see something out of place, or if you think something could be improved that I haven’t mentioned please get in touch my either commenting or emailing
