Ideas for improving my website

Posted: - Modified: | idea
  1. Add a section about my speaking topics and events
  2. Switch to Drupal and customize it
  3. Restore the Feedburner widget that shows how many people read this blog
  4. Make it easy to view my blog through different lenses (geek, life, both)
  5. Have a landing page that explains the site for first-time visitors
  6. Allow people to choose their default landing page when they come to sachachua.com
  7. Add more photos
  8. Make my sketches easier to view
  9. Allow people to toggle full entry, summary, or list view
  10. Put my self-introduction on the front page
  11. Highlight certain blog posts
  12. Extract names, e-mail addresses, and websites of people who have commented, and thank them
  13. Remember to respond to comments by e-mail as well as online
  14. Find a way of sharing the books I’m currently reading and what I’m learning from them
  15. Add a page with my blogroll
  16. Link to my other presences on the Web
  17. Make it easier to remember visitors’ details
  18. Visualize my posts and my posting frequency
  19. Format into a nice PDF
  20. Pull in relevant Twitter entries
  21. Make it easier for people to subscribe
  22. Use category templates and icons
  23. Share my task list again?
  24. Share my currently-checked-out list again
  25. Share my book summaries
  26. Share my to-read list
  27. Share my reading history
You can view 9 comments or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

9 comments

Chris Charabaruk

2009-01-03T20:50:40Z

Might I suggest you use Disqus for comments when you switch to Drupal, rather than use the core comments module?

My reasoning for this is pretty simple: Using comment.module means people either leave pseudonymous comments, or have to create an account just for your site. Using Disqus means they have an account that works all over the net, reducing the need to track multiple accounts. Not only that but Disqus now supports Facebook Connect (and no doubt has OpenID support on the way) which opens the gates to comments from interested parties even more!

As for linking to your other presences online, FriendFeed, the FriendFeed module for Drupal, and a custom pipe that Rob Loach made could do the job nicely. If you see the service icons on coldacid dot net, they're collected from FriendFeed through that custom pipe, and a custom module Rob made for his site emits the HTML to display them from the pipe's JSON output. I can share the code with you, if you want -- just drop me an e-mail.

Worth a try. Thanks for the suggestion! It'd be great to get some kind of backup of it too, and to see if I can import my existing Wordpress comments... I'll look into it!

Chris Charabaruk

2009-01-04T02:10:07Z

I think it is possible for your Wordpress comments to be imported into Disqus, although it'd be best to ask @danielha about that. I know Rob was at one point working on a way to move Drupal comments to Disqus, although that was a while ago.

Why switch to Drupal?

Because I understand how to hack it better, and most indicators point to Drupal being more extensible than Wordpress if you want to do non-bloggy things. =)

23. share your task list - it has helped me in the past - i also find it motivating - gary

Sameer Vasta

2009-01-05T01:10:55Z

I recently (yesterday!) redesigned my site and had to go through a similar exercise. I don't think I was as thorough as you though! Good luck with making all the changes!

PS: Disqus plays very nicely with WordPress, allowing backups, import, and export. I don't use it on my blog, but I am a big fan of the service.

Wow, that's a lot. How do you find the time for all the amazing stuff you do? I've been visiting your site since 2007 (or 2006?) for reasons unknown. Maybe because you seem organized and amazing to me (I hope that doesn't sound 'stalker-ish' to you :-P) Please do numbers 23, 25, 26, and 27. :-)

Hi !

23 Share my task list again?
- yes !! - this was interesting and your list inspired me in a lot of ways.