Every time I break down the third wall and spout about the changes (few of late) that I’m making to scatterbrain, it gets a little easier. So in the knowledge that published roadmaps are a great motivator, I’m going to lay out a few intended changes.
Apparently it’s not entirely clear to new readers what in the blue hell is going on around here. Each entry is unrelated to the last and there is nothing permanent to tell people what it’s all about. And there’s the key word, isn’t it? About. Currently the ‘about’ section of the site consists of a single, somewhat cryptic, page describing me. It contains no attempt at a description of the site’s purpose, or of why one would want to read it. Compounding this is the difficulty in finding the ‘about’ page. It merits a single link, unadorned, squashed in a list.
So onto the plan. The main page will feature a box in the sidebar, above the internal navigation and linkroll, differently coloured and containing a short explanatory text and a link to the ‘about’ section. The main ‘about’ page will explain and link to three others:
- One, similar to the current lone page will describe me. It will likely still include the text written by stephen. It will also likely feature more input from me, including a revised introduction.
- The next is probably the most important. It will be a ‘what the hell is going on?’ page, describing what the site is and how to read it — how to find the archives, how to comment, how to link to entries.
- I have intended to write a basic technical introduction to the site for some time. A desription of scattebrain, how the site is built, the structure of the site. This page will be for other web monkeys who might be interested to see my approach.
Unfortunately UCD computer services and netsoc both seem to be repelled by the idea of offering proxies for ftp or which don’t block all but port 80. In English: I have great difficulty administrating this site from college. Otherwise the changes would be in place and this entry would be ‘Check out the blue box. Cool, huh?’