Blog Design

Since I recently got back into the blogging thing, I've also been trying to catch up on my blog reading and commenting. And there are a few things that have stuck out to me that I wanted to share for my friends who are starting up new blogs, redesigning blogs, and even maybe for those who have been blogging a while and haven't really thought about these things:

1. I'm a lot more likely to comment if I don't have to deal with CAPTCHA. Deciding whether to remove that step is something everyone has to evaluate, and I understand if you're more comfortable keeping it. I don't know what kinds of comments you might get if you get rid of it, but I know what kinds of comments you're less likely to get--the ones that I'm considering posting but aren't important enough for me to bother if I have to do the CAPTCHA too.

2. I use an RSS reader (Google Reader specifically in my case), and I don't like seeing only a preview of the posts I'm reading. If I have to click through to read the whole post, I'm more likely just to mark that I've read it. For a really long time I had the settings of this blog on preview only and didn't even know it. So unless you're sure what your settings are, take a moment to check and make sure you're happy with them.

3. I heard a while back that readers prefer dark text on a light background to light text on a dark background. I was skeptical at first, but now that I've been paying attention, I really agree.

So these are all things that I've learned in the past year. Now what about you? Do you have any suggestions for how I could make my blog better for you?

New Blog Design!

Look, look, look, everybody! My blog has a new design! And isn't it lovely?

I've been thinking of doing a redesign for a while, and I knew what I wanted, but at first I didn't know how to get it. I'm not much of an artist myself.

Then I remembered Sen Holiday. I know Sen through her sister, who is one of my critique partners. A year ago I connected with Sen about the video game design group I'm part of (GeeQ Studios), which she joined soon after. I knew she would be perfect for getting my idea into an image.

And I was right! I love it!

About the quill key:

I consider myself to be very lucky to have married into such a beautiful last name as Lockwood. The name combines two things that I consider to be magical: keys (which always make me think of secrets and hidden doors) and trees (which are not only magical themselves, but are also where books come from).

The magic of my last name was the original inspiration for using “writelock” for my blog address. In my head I had this idea of writing opening the locks on the doors of our minds. And that lead to the idea of the quill key.

So I knew exactly how I wanted the image for my new blog design to look, but without Sen it would never have happened. I'm so grateful to her for her help! I love her work and I know other people will too.

If you want to know more about Sen and her art, you can visit her here. Thank you so much, Sen, for making this happen for me! I'm so pleased with the result.