website refresh

For the last few weeks I've been trying to update my website.

Most of my updates are of the basic content kind - predominantly nowadays that means adding a new review. But this update is slightly different, because I want to do two things.

First off, I want to tweak the design. I've been pretty happy with my most recent site design, so it's not a radical departure, more of a spruce up. For some reason, every time I do a redesign I strive to make things simpler. I'm not sure why this is - probably partly because I associate simplicity with elegance - but also maybe because I find when I'm doing a regular update there'll be some niggle that makes it slightly inefficient.

So that's one thing and it would normally take a little while to implement a simple design tweak like this.

But the other thing I want to do is a kind of a triumvirate of "r"s - I want to restructure, repurpose and review.

By restructure I mean I want to tweak the internal layout of folders and files so that it's more logical and easier to work with when I add new stuff.

By re-purpose I mean I want to change the focus of the my site. Essentially, I want to make trismugistus.com, which is my main site and the only one I really update any more, a stand-alone reviews site.

And by review I mean I want to go through all my reviews and check the content. Over the years I've veered all over the place in terms of a standard layout for the reviews, but also I want to go through and correct all the typos and errors I've made.

And it's this very last bit that I'm stuck on. I've done a new design, I've tweaked all the folder structures and page layouts and I've adjusted things so that trismugistus.com is solely a review site. And then I started going through the reviews and it's taken ages.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that it's quite tedious. I think one of the main reasons I have lots of reviews with these types of errors in is because while I'll happily bash the review out, I don't then enjoy going through it and giving it a proper edit. It's just quicker and easier to stick it up on the site. So now I'm compressing this boring editing process down into a big chunk and it's horrendously dull.

I've also found I had far more reviews than I realised - there are dozens of the things, and for each one you're talking about a thousand words. That means it's like editing and proof-reading a small novel.

So yeah, a site refresh is coming, but it may be Christmas before I find enough time to devote to completing it :/.