Ok, so this is going to be the first post in line with my themed content structure. As mentioned here, the first topic covered will be a blog re-construction / spring clean, using my own site as a live example! I’ll be using the wordpress tagging feature (comes with the latest version) to identify themes as we go along.

Since this post is an overview, I’ll be looking to state a few of my aims, and the reasoning behind looking to overhaul my blog. I’ll the finish off by letting Darren Rowse do the talking through one of his related video posts.

What I want to achieve:

* a faster running blog, light-weight design and optimal resource usage
* a cleaner reader experience, better navigation and accessibility
* some work on the internal linking structure (not all SEO is blackhat!)
* more structured content, with a better focus (hence the themes)
* greater opportunity for interactivity, especially for repeat readers
* research on the best social networking techniques for the blog

A fair list to be getting on with, and I’ll go into more detail on those different areas as I progress through this theme. The ultimate goal is to become a more authoratitive blog, with a decent readership base. That should be the goal of every blogger of course!

Why I want to overhaul?

Primarily because I’ve never been happy with my blogging. Although I started off with a long term action plan, it proved to be too narrow (I exhausted my frequent material after a while), which led to me blogging less regularly, and more erratically. This time I want to try a more realistic long term plan, that I can more easily stick to. The themes are a device for producing more regular content, with the advantage that at the beginning of each theme, (as here) I will have set out what I want to talk about.

Will it work? Well, I guess we’re going to find out!

Over to Darren:

I immediately thought of this video when I began writing the article. I’d seen it a few days ago, and it is a great introduction to the things you can do to spring-clean your blog, from a new design, to going back and updating old posts, and re-evaluating your ad space.

Some of the things he talks about I will also be focusing on in later posts, in combination with a few ideas of my own. Enjoy!