Last Friday was a busy, but highly productive, day for my TechTraction redesign project. I finished the planned changes for sidebar #1, and managed to start work on sidebar #2. Since I was able to start that work, I don’t have much redesign work left for sidebar #2. Nevertheless, let me give you a quick walk through of what was done and what remains.

Sidebar #2 managed to almost redesign itself as a side effect of redesigning sidebar #1. The “categories” and “archives” sections got moved to sidebar #1, which left the “search box” and “meta section” in sidebar #2. I have some strong opinions about these remaining items so here is what I did:

• Meta: A standard part of most WordPress themes; however, aside from making it easy for you to login into the WordPress dashboard, the Meta section has absolutely no value. Since it’s taking up prime sidebar real estate, my decision was easy: delete this section.
• Search box: Another standard part of most WordPress themes; however, I doubt many people actually “search” a blog. Unfortunately, I’m not 100% positive my usage assumption is correct. Therefore, I’ll remove it for now, but bring it back later by integrating it into my header section.

Once I removed those two sections, nothing was left in sidebar #2. Therefore, if sidebar #1 is all about navigation, what is sidebar #2? I could use it for advertisements such as Google adsense ads and other affiliate programs. While I do plan to use ads on this site, I don’t believe sidebar #2 isn’t the best place to put them. I’ve decided, instead, to put more “community” building links and widgets in this second sidebar.

• RSS Subscription: Every blog that wants feed subscribers has to have a link to their RSS feed. I was tempted to add the RSS link along with an image “chic-let” for every other subscription service under the sun. I’ve seen this approach on several other sites and thought it looked great; however, I installed the Feedburner Feed Replacement plugin by Steve Smith which leverages the Feedburner subscription interface. When a user clicks on the link, they get taken to feedburner where they can select which RSS reader interface they use. Therefore instead of a pile of “chic-lets” I have one RSS option for everything. Better use of space and looks much cleaner (although I still think a pile of image “chic-lets” would have looked cool).
• Technorati Favorite: Next to an RSS subscription link I placed a link that enables visitors to quickly favorite this blog on Technorati. Having a high ranking in Technorati can attract new visitors to my blog, and having someone “favorite” my blog back at Technorati can help that overall ranking. Since I want more people coming to TechTraction, it’s wise to make it easy for my visitors to “favorite” this site.
• MyBlogLog Widget: If you’re not familiar with MyBlogLog, check out their web site and read what they say about themselves because I have a hard time describing it myself. The best I can come up with is that MyBlogLog is a community of bloggers. Adding the MyBlogLog widget extends the “community” to my site thus enabling MyBlogLog members to see who else might have visited TechTraction. The benefit is hard to define but I believe it does exist.

For now I’m considering my redesign of sidebar #2 a work in progress. I have the essential components in place with ample real estate left over. As I discover new plugins and ideas, I can quickly add them to the available space in this sidebar.

Next, it’s time to tackle the header. I need to deal with the confusing image and lacking tag line immediately or I might lose potential readers. Stay tuned.

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Filed under: Blogging Related