Feeling Different

If you asked me about a year ago what my favorite blogs were, I would give you the same answers that most of you would give. Lately, and by that I mean about 6 months or so, maybe a little longer, I’ve been feeling like none of them are writing about anything that I need anymore. I’m not going to mention any names because I respect what they gave me. What do I mean by ‘need’ though? That feeling of “Holy CRAP that is awesome.” I don’t know if the caliber of writing has gone down on those blogs, or if I’ve just grown beyond what they are doing. Only one major blog has kept up with where I am at and what I want to see, and that is net.tutsplus.com. Everyone else seems to be posting the same fluff pieces about things plumbers can teach us. I want tutorials about some bad-ass CSS3 techniques that no one has thought of. Or the video tutorial series I’m watching on net.tuts about starting Ruby.

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Poorly titled article yesterday

Ok, I apologize for yesterday’s article title. That was all about me. What about YOU though? Are you thinking of redesigning your website? Let’s take a look at what you should be thinking about, where to start, and being serious about what you are about to do.

Don’t just jump in!

Your first impulse when you are about to update your site is to just dive head first into the project without a second thought. Maybe you saw a cool photo that you want to use, or were inspired by 50 sites that were in some other blog’s list article (like me!). Or maybe you had no thoughts, but just decided it was time to do something about your site. I can tell you from experience that just noodling around in Photoshop will bring only a bunch of crap. I’ve tried that approach, and it doesn’t work. Expecting something awesome to come about from just playing around isn’t going to happen. What should you do? Absolutely NOTHING at first concerning the actual design. Get a notebook, or open Evernote, or even Paprika (love that little app), and start making lists.

First things first, go to your current site and look at it. Don’t just be all “Ya it *#Y@ing sucks.” I mean really look at it. Try to remember why you did the things you did. Write a list of what isn’t working, and another of what is. Be honest, because you will only hurt your future brilliant piece of interweb awesomeness. Is the navigation a well organized one? Do you have random things you put in just to show that you can do it? A careful study of what you did, will help you avoid what you shouldn’t do again. I found tons of things on mine, and it was a bit depressing that some items were so ill thought out.

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