Some really big things are in store for this site and the readers, and these changes were a preparation for rolling out the next phase of the site in about a week or two.
Navigational Changes
You’ll notice on the old screenshot on the right that I had two subscribe links in their own section… but then the feedburner gadget was all the way below everything else, which is far too disorganized for me, so I moved the subscribe functions into their own box and added icons.
The categories have also been consolidated, mostly moving all the linux / unix articles into one single section, and throwing all the odd categories like blogging under the “Other Geek Stuff” category. From looking at analytics nobody used the smaller categories anyway.
I added icons to spice things up and make the categories stand out a little more.
Recent Articles
The next thing I tackled was making the recent articles easier to read. You’ll notice that the old version on the right here was almost impossible to read… it looked like a blob of jumbled text.
Categories
The category pages have been changed to sort by name… but I’m actually not very happy with that. I will be adding the ability to sort categories by either name or date, I just haven’t figured out yet how to nicely group articles by date range and still make it readable.
The next change to categories will be better navigational options to fit in with the upcoming module of the site.
Where Did the Bounties Go?
I’ve temporarily removed the links to the bounty program. This doesn’t mean that I’m doing away with it, but the idea behind the program is going to get a huge overhaul over the next few months or so. We’ll just say that there’s a plan in place to expand the bounty program.
Sponsored Ads…
One of the reasons for widening the sidebar slightly is that I’d like to move to using sponsored ads in the sidebar instead of Adsense at the top of the post. This is something that I’m still working out, and you are free to contact me if you want more information or would just like to complain =)
I hate cluttered sites with advertising on every inch of them, so I can assure you that I will not let that happen here. I want to try and keep this site as clean and organized as I possibly can, because a how-to site should be easy to read.
What’s Next?
Another big reason for this change is so that I can launch the next big section of the site, and I’m going to need the help of the readers to make it succeed. Look for that rollout either next or the following weekend.
