This isn't a real column, just an extended program note. I am busily working on tomorrow's year-end awards column, combing through the year's events for all the forgotten stuff, so I am currently too swamped to write an new article.

Instead, I thought I would ask readers for some preferences, as I work to figure out what the design of the new site will look like. I am heavily in favor of the "KISS" principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid!) and so am looking to remove a whole bunch of stuff. These sorts of things were niceties way back when, in the dawn of blogging, but are all woefully outdated now.

But before I do, I thought I'd ask whether anyone still uses this stuff or not, just so people can make the case to keep things. This will be in no particular order, just random design ideas (mostly for stuff to strip out).

RSS

Does anyone still use this? I did have one reader who (a long time ago) said he did use it to have articles delivered on a regular basis, but I don't think the feature is in common use anymore. This is up in the top menu bar, but like I said I doubt it gets much (if any) use anymore.

Home

Also in the top menu bar, but not really needed. Superfluous since it takes you to the same place you go when you click the header image ("grumpy cat").

All the static info pages consolidated somehow

"About Chris," "About This Blog," "FAQ," and maybe even "Email Chris" -- all of these will likely be grouped together into some sort of single icon, or perhaps a drop-down menu or something. Just one item on the main page, and then you can pick which info page you want to read. "Email Chris" may stay as a standalone item (button or menu or icon) somewhere, as will "Donate!" and "Log In/Out." But everything else doesn't really need its own link (unless perhaps way down at the bottom in some sort of "site map" list of links?).

Our Affiliated Sites

Going bye-bye. There are two, but for one of them I don't even own the domain name for anymore. "ObamaPollWatch.com" is a dead link, and "FridayTalkingPoints" will now just take you to a list of all the FTP columns. You'll still be able to type "FridayTalkingPoints.com" into a browser and it'll take you there (I still do own this domain name), but there won't be a button on the CW.com pages to do the same thing anymore.

Everything else in the right sidebar

"Donations" is going to stay, in some form or another, but right now it's kind of a double-link since there's a link in the top menu bar (which takes you to the most-current pledge drive "how to donate" page) as well as the little orange button in the right sidebar (which takes you directly to PayPal to donate). Which reminds me... keep those donations coming in, folks! Our 2024 pledge drive is off to a very slow start this year....

But everything else over on the right is all going away, as these are all hangovers from the early years of blogging. Many of these are dead links, in fact. And I have almost stripped them out a number of times just because of that, but it would have left the site with a weird unbalanced look, so I kept them in. But "My Links," "Activist Links" and "Just For Fun" will all be going away in the redesign.

Recent Articles

This will stay. Currently it lists the past 10 articles (two weeks' worth, essentially) and I use this all the time myself when I'm looking for what I recently wrote. Oh, that brings up a side issue: should the main page's article list (in the middle, the headers and little blurb paragraphs from each article) perhaps be longer? Currently it's the same 10 articles long, but with phones and scrolling being more common, perhaps it should go back further?

Search

Search will stay. It's necessary, and I use it all the time.

Archives

This will stay, but in a different form. Rather than a giant list of every month back to the beginning of time, it'll probably be some sort of plugin where you can click to navigate a little calendar or something along those lines. I'm going to pick one that I can actually use, though, so hopefully it'll be usable for everyone else too.

Article Categories

I am on the fence about this one. Do other people use it? I do, but only occasionally. If people tell me they also use it, I will keep it. Also, should there be any other categories in the list? This list is manual -- I create it -- so if there's something missing I can add it, if people want. But I refuse to go back and comb through thousands of previous articles -- if a new category appears, it will only start from that point going forward (just to warn people).

Multimedia

This is going bye-bye too, sorry.

Permalink/Trackback

When you read an article, you get these two links at the bottom. Permalink will stay in some form or another (probably as a little "chain link" icon), but the Trackback one is (I think) incredibly dated and not-useful. Let me know if anyone thinks differently.

Sharing

This will definitely be updated. Let me know what social media sites you'd like to see here, although I'm going to start with a pretty standard list (Facebook, Instagram, email, etc.). But if there are others you'd like to see, let me know.

OK, that's it for now. Feel free to add anything else you'd like to see change. I'm going to try to put together a big list of instructions for the web designer this weekend (if I have time!) so I will be very interested to hear everyone's thoughts.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant