This Is Not News

I am just barely making it to Day 5 of my renewed posting regimen – I have a headache that’s stopping me from putting together the post I had in mind for today, but I think it’s a good occasion to take a look at the site’s current form and see what I think. More importantly, I can beg for feedback or ideas.

• Part of what made it easier for me to post this week is that I finally moved the site’s hosting from Globat to Bluehost. So far I am very happy with this choice. Globat occasionally would have some kind of odd hiccup that would make it hard for me to access the site or make changes. Bluehost’s control panel has been easy to work with and I had little trouble with moving the content. Which reminds me, I need to renew the site’s hosting contract.
• I upgraded to the latest version of WordPress, which definitely makes a bunch of functions easier. I noticed it when I was moving content from the old forum – it’s pretty easy to click the right boxes and get the post up. And I found a theme that works with the new version. So far I like it, but I’m not wedded to it.
• I’m still thinking about the sidebar to the right. Is having the Recent Posts and Recent Comments worth it? Does anyone find it useful to be able to click on a particular month’s archives, or does the Calendar serve that purpose well enough? I would like to add an Amazon widget. I don’t know if being an Amazon affiliate is even worth the effort these days, but I feel like I should give it a try. Is there anything else that should be there and isn’t?
• There is now a link to Register at the top of the sidebar, so if you would like to leave a comment here, please feel free to do so. I would love to see if I could make that link more prominent. Maybe I’ll try to create a specific Register widget.
• I really like the way this theme (Techozoic) formats posts. The date and headline look good, and it comes with social media buttons buttons built in so I can finally get on that bandwagon.
• I should probably make the headline/title fonts a little darker, and get a Not News logo up somewhere on the page.
• The blog roll definitely needs an update – I haven’t touched that in years.

So, overall, I’m happy with the way the site is functioning right now, and I hope that keeps me motivated to keep adding content. Thoughts, suggestions and feedback are always welcome, but right now while I have the time to do something about them, they’re particularly useful.