This is an old note to myself…
Turns out I’m trying to redesign my site without really nailing down some sort of content plan and/or strategy. Breaking one of the biggies of web design by jumping into this without first figuring out a few things like:
- What will I write about? Just design? No, I have many other interests that I’d like to post on.
- How will I promote the site? At this point, until I have the redesign complete, I’m not going to. Any traffic I get will be organic and who knows, maybe it’ll grow over time…?
- Site organization/architecture/maintenance. It’s pretty straightforward: Blog, Portfolio, Contact… I’m really looking to simplify what I have in an effort to make maintaining the site more manageable. Right now one big flash file just doesn’t cut it (and it’s been languishing for the better part of 3 years as I haven’t made the time to update it… Life has other demands that take higher priority over the portfolio site. That’s another post.)
What I think I’m really struggling with is figuring out how to handle the site’s content and what my strategy is.
Here’s a quick recounting of what I’ve been thinking:
URL: duh…
Features/purpose:
- Showcase my graphic design ability for freelance work.
- I’d also like to make it more of a place for me to express my thinking on what I do, etc. Sort of a destination for me. I’d like to have some tutorials, basic design discussion and life in general sort of categories.
- I’m also keen on having a way to feature imagery from my sketchbook on a semi-regular basis.
- Provide some sort of way for me to tap into either Google or Yahoo ads. (Still up in the air as to which one would be more lucrative, but also which one is more flexible, etc.? I’m leaning towards Yahoo merely because Google wants to index everything… It’s a philosophical thing.)
- Other affiliate advertising… I think it’ll have it’s place, but I’m not sure where. Maybe links to books and music? (Does iTunes have an affiliate?)
- Bio information. Right now I feel like I don’t sum up my professional self well-enough. Perhaps I can work on something that’s better.
- Resume acces. PDF, RTF, Word and HTML? Too much? Probably. Better to narrow it down to PDF and HTML.
- Modular and updateable. I want to learn things as I work on the site. I’ve neglected it for much too long and it’s time to remedy that.
Positioning:
That’s a tough one for me. I am a graphic designer and I focus on print and web work. I enjoy them both and also enjoy technology. But the technology I think hampers my doing things. I’m too busy looking at and not doing. I need to figure out some way to get past that. Perhaps it’s as simple as unhooking myself from the sites I frequent. Newsvine is a terrible timesink for me. I can spend hours there….
Back to the task at hand… Off to do a bit of research so I can better determine how to position myself and my site.