Dewang's LifeStream

Test post from iPhone

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 19:19:12 -0400

This is a test post

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Tips for designing your personal site | Kevin Burke

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 21:38:40 -0400

http://kev.inburke.com/kevin/site-redesign/

Tips for designing your personal site

Last weekend I redesigned my website. The new site has a homepage featuring a bunch of different things I’ve been working on, and a blog post view with no header, just a sidebar and the post itself. As a result the site is way more usable.

With any redesign you have to start by looking at what your audience needs and then tailor the site for those needs. My user base divides into three groups:

Friends and family, who will read more or less everything I write
Drive by Google traffic, who are likely to visit one page and then leave
Potential clients/employers/partners, who were referred from Hacker News, Twitter, an email I sent out or a job application.

I am guaranteed to get traffic from the first two groups, as long as I don’t break the site. The third group of clients, employers and business partners are people who do not yet know me, but may interact with me soon, and the site plays a big role in helping them make that decision. So the redesign is targeted toward that group.

To win that third group of users, my site has to answer one question: Who is this person and why should I listen to him? My old site didn’t do a very good job of answering that question. Here’s what it looked like:

The standard blog template, where posts are displayed in reverse chronological order, is good for only one use case – where the writer updates frequently and the readers want to see what’s changed since the last time they visited. The majority of blogs on the Internet don’t fit this model because the authors update infrequently and don’t have a consistent audience. Therefore, they should consider a different navigation scheme for their sites; the main problems are outlined in this Jakob Nielsen article on blog usability. My old site used a reverse chronological order for navigation, and here are some of the problems with that design:

No way to find good content that may be a year or more older.
Posts are on a variety of different topics, appealing to different groups of users, with no organization.
No photo, or description of me, on any page.
All of the action items (send email, read more about me, etc) require at least one full page refresh; this is too difficult, as most users are lazy and won’t hunt around.
Articles are posted in full text, meaning that user attention span might run out quickly (and also that 10 posts worth of images are requested and downloaded)
Finally, the large number of different pages made it more difficult to maintain, and each attempt to tackle a part would leave me overwhelmed thinking about fixing the whole thing.

So I had the following goals in mind for the redesign:

Tell a better story about me on every page.
Put the best content on my site in front of users.
Make the action items (email, Twitter, etc) easier to click.
Also, improve page load time, which would boost user satisfaction and my Google rankings. Google found that a half second delay in page load time dropped traffic by 20%.

So here’s what I came up with for the homepage:

And the single blog post view:

I’m pretty pleased with the way they turned out. The homepage essentially consolidates the information that was spread across five pages in the menu of the old design. Furthermore, it displays ten of my best posts, organized by category, and a sample of things I’ve tweeted, so there will be at least some dynamic content on the page for users who visit.

I also took some steps to improve the page load speed. I installed two caching plugins – WP Minify, which minifies and combines all of your Javascript and CSS files into one file of each type, and WP Super Cache, which generates a static HTML file and then serves that file to users, instead of hitting the database every time a user requests a page. These help minimize the response time, the number of requests, and the size of each request.

I also use a sprite to display the icons on the blog page view, turning five requests into just one. As a result, the blog post view gets a score of 83/100 and the home page gets a score of 78/100, about a 20 point improvement over the old design.

So that’s the analysis of my site redesign. Now if I could just to find a posting schedule and stick to it!

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PilotHandwriting.com

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 21:23:14 -0400

PilotHandwriting.com

14 Of The Best Business Model Articles You Should Read

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 07:47:03 -0400

14 Of The Best Business Model Articles You Should Read

Slow Dance

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 06:24:11 -0400

Have you ever watched kids On a merry-go-round?

Or listened to the rain Slapping on the ground?

Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight? Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?

You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast.

Time is short. The music won’t last.

Do you run through each day On the fly?

When you ask “How are you?” Do you hear the reply?

When the day is done Do you lie in your bed With the next hundred chores Running through your head?

You’d better slow down Don’t dance so fast.

Time is short. The music won’t last.

Ever told your child, We’ll do it tomorrow? And in your haste, Not see his sorrow?

Ever lost touch, Let a good friendship die Cause you never had time To call and say “Hi”?

You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast.

Time is short. The music won’t last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere You miss half the fun of getting there.

When you worry and hurry through your day, It is like an unopened gift…. Thrown away.

Life is not a race. Do take it slower

Hear the music Before the song is over.

http://www.stevenpressfield.com/2011/04/the-foolscap-method/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+pressfieldblog+%28Steven+Pressfield+Blog%29

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 17:18:06 -0400

http://www.stevenpressfield.com/2011/04/the-foolscap-method/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+pressfieldblog+%28Steven+Pressfield+Blog%29:

Can you boil down your idea/movie/startup/philanthropic venture into elements so basic that they’ll fit onto the back of an envelope.

Show HN: Profile.io - Profiles for Developers

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 18:09:29 -0400

Show HN: Profile.io - Profiles for Developers

TurboTax SnapTax Filing taxes will never be the same. Game...

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 21:14:52 -0500

TurboTax SnapTax

Filing taxes will never be the same. Game change.

Take a photo of your W-2
Answer a few questions.
File :-)

On Focus

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 22:21:25 -0500

On Focus:

Urges entrepreneurs to focus on one idea at a time, preferably one you love. His idea, and mine, can be boiled down together to one word: focus.

2011: The year your mobile phone becomes your wallet

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 21:51:54 -0500

2011: The year your mobile phone becomes your wallet:

A gold rush on the next e-commerce frontier.

"Satisfaction of one’s curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life."

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 11:26:51 -0500

““Satisfaction of one’s curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life.””

- Dr. Linus Pauling

Snow Day

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 22:37:49 -0500

Snow Day

There are years that ask questions and years that answer them. May next year answer some of those...

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 10:30:23 -0500

There are years that ask questions and years that answer them. May next year answer some of those questions…Have a happy new year guys!!!

Snow (Taken with instagram)

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 16:07:00 -0500

Snow (Taken with instagram)

DIY invisible Christmas tree

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 17:53:54 -0500

DIY invisible Christmas tree

Guy Kawasaki - Holy Kaw!

Bring the holiday spirit into your home without the hassle of vacuuming up pine needles or finding a place to store a 12’ artificial tree with the do-it-yourself invisible Christmas tree. Technically, the designer calls it Christmas tree ornament mobile, but invisible tree sounds so much more intriguing and superhero-like.

The crafty folks at notmartha.com have all the step-by-step instructions for your Christmas and DIY-ing pleasure.

Full instructions at Not Martha.

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"tulips" inspired by Ansel Adams

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 17:45:03 -0500

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"flowers @ the store" [photo of the day]

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 17:21:07 -0500

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Radio City Music Hall - NYC

Wed, 22 Dec 2010 18:22:34 -0500

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Photo of the day: "Choices"

Sun, 12 Dec 2010 16:30:57 -0500

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Most people don't lead their lives-they accept their lives.

Sat, 11 Dec 2010 22:10:56 -0500

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