Dropping The Sidebar

I have been doing this blog for a while now and while I have been keeping the content updated, it is a long time since I looked at the appearance of the blog itself.  I was fairly happy with it when I settled on the layout about 5 years ago. But nothing stays the same forever, and the web in particular shoots along at a rate that leaves most of us straining to keep up.  So what looked okay in 2011 doesn’t really stand up in 2016.

Unfortunately style and design flair aren’t really my things so I’ll accept that I am probably always going to be behind the curve appearance wise.  But there are a few things that I can polish up a bit and improve, but I’ll have to fit them in with everything else I am doing.

But one relatively easy choice was that I have decided to drop the sidebars.  Looking back I don’t think that they ever did much for the reader.  But I am sure that they don’t add to the user experience any more.  When I am browsing the web nowadays I find that I much prefer sites that are uncluttered and don’t distract my attention with lots of ads and irrelevant material.  So I am going to try my best to bring that to my blog.  I don’t have the skills to do that straight away, especially as I do get a steady stream of  enquiries from this blog for my consultancy services.  These are obviously something that is of interest to only a tiny number of readers, but not something that I want to hide from people who do want them.  It might take a while to get the balance right there.

This will take some time to sort out.  I’ll have to get under the bonnet and fiddle with things.  I might need to do some experiments with layouts, so if you are a regular reader bear with me.

I’m also going to think more about what exactly is the purpose this blog serves and what I want to be doing with it.  When it started I was basically writing whatever came into my head.  I didn’t have any readers, apart from my Mum, so it didn’t really matter that much.  Now I get hundreds of visits every day I really need to think about what kind of stuff I am serving up a bit more.

So, the sidebars are going now but expect to see more changes in the future.