In my post “Site (& Content) Upgrade” I talked about how old my site is, and listed several changes that I had planned.
Update – 19 June 2016
Here’s an update on the progress, so far.
Self-Hosted
As mentioned, this is Done
NewSite Design
I have been testing a few themes,but I’m still being cautious. Haven’t decided on a good one yet.
However …
Fonts
I have been tweaking other parts of the site. This includes the font. Here’s what it used to look like…
I hope you like the new font that I am using. I’ve also made changes to the headings.
This was done thanks to a great tool called CSS Hero. that allows me to easily change the style of the site just using my mouse.
I’m not much of a coder (anymore). I knew that there was a lot I could do with CSS, that defines the style of the site, but I never knew where to start. Fortunately, I found CSS Hero, and with this, I just click on the element that I want to style, and then I changed the font, colours, spacing, etc, etc. (You can check out CSS Hero here)
And …
Icons
I’m now using some beautiful icons in various posts where appropriate. (Have a look at “No Team Member Should be Indispensable“)
These I am creating them with a product called iconcrafts. With this, I can select icons and them style them as I wish.
Selective Pruning
This is an ongoing thing. I’ve had a cursory look at my old posts, and trashed ones that I didn’t think were of any value. At the same time, as I work my way through my posts, I am examining each one, and if there are posts that could add value if they were expanded upon, I’m doing that.
I’m also adding more graphical content. This includes:
- Adding high-quality relevant images to the beginning of the post
- Adding more images in the post
- Adding infographics where relevant.
- Adding downloadable content, such as checklists, formatted PDF versions, etc.
Here is a list of updated posts.
More Relevance
I’ve been keeping an eye on what’s been happening in the Business Analysis, and Information Management, fields, but have been, pretty much, concentrating on upgrading the current content.
Post Titles
Yep – here I’ve been busy. As I deal with each post, I’ve been checking whether the post title described what the post was about. If not, some serious tweaking was taking place.
This also can include the “slug”. (This is the last bit of the web page address).
Changing the “slug” means that you are also changing the URL for the post. If there are links to this post from other pages in this blog, or other external sites, then the user will get a “Page Not Found” error.
To avoid that, I’m using a WordPress plugin called “Redirection”. When someone clicks on the old address, the user is redirected to the new address.
Relevant Resources
For each post, I am having a look at resources that will expand upon the topic that was written about.
This can include books, courses, etc. I’m listing these at the end of the post.
I’m also including downloads, etc.
Easier Navigation
This is an ongoing thing.
I have been simplifying the categorization of posts. The categories are “Business Analysis”, “Information Management”, and “Other”.
Then I am making more use of tags for each post. These describe more what the post is actually about.
The goal is to use the categories and the tags to set up a logicaUnfortunately, that hasn’t happened yet. However, I am still working on it.
What do you think
I haven’t included this functionality yet.
SEO
Thanks to the plugin Yoast’s SEO, I’m working on each post to improve its search engine optimization.
This includes:
- Assigning a key phrase
- Adjustin the title of the post
- Making the text easier to read,
- Ensuring that the images are relevant, and labeled properly,
- Including a Meta-Description (a small amount of text that is displayed on the search pages, and describes what the post is about).
Updated Posts
I’ve been working my way through all my posts and have been modifying them as necessary.
Naturally, this is a work-in-progress. As I go through reworking my posts, I ‘m learning along the way. This means that I might think of, and apply a design technique in some of the later posts. Then I’ll go back and retweak the earlier posts that I worked on.
In any case, here’s a list of the posts updated so far. Go and have a look.
Thanks for taking the time to read this – Mark