Planned Tweaks & Changes to The Big Picture

OK, it’s a new year, and I have some tweaks I want to make to the site. (If any Word Press programmers want to contact me about this job, send an email to thebigpicture -at- optonline -dot- net, with your contact info, some site examples or work, estimated time to completion, and rates).

Overall, I like this basic design since moving from Typepad in November 2008. However, a few flaws I want to fix/tweak/upgrade:

1. Layout: I have five items for this:

a. Move the Flash header to the Café (lose the Café header); Develop new graphic for TBP main page.

b. Yes, the Header is too large (The crowd has spoken!) – it needs to be 20-30% smaller across all blog sections.

c.  Either kill the dead space above the header image, or structure it so it could hold a 728 X 160 leaderboard. (Perhaps make the top a “Frame” – content below scrolls, top horizontal stays stationary).

d. Cut the 6 Tabs down to 4 – what I would prefer to see is the Tabs being less “busy” looking. Make them transparent except for the front one, all flush right. (See Mint as an example). Lose TBP tab (redundant, as the far left logo serves the same purpose); Lose the Jobs tab (it’s a ghost town), combine digital media with video. Rename the 4 tabs as follows:

. . . Think Tank . . . Book Club . . . Video & Media . . . TBA

e. Add Category and Calendar Archives to lower right column

2. Modifying Design & Structure: Right now, the sidebar is identical across all sections. I want to be able to customize each one differently.

3. Special Content: I am totally jazzed about a new person coming on board – they will be a regular in the Café/Think Tank. He cranks out 5 -10 very short comments a day. I want to add a box on the front page, and pull the first 100-200 words of these comments into that box. Clicking on the text takes you to the full post. There needs to be a way to automate the entire process, preferably via email, to post and excerpt.

4. Advertising: In the sidebar (right hand column) I need to add another 250 X 300 ad unit into the “above the fold.” The main column shows the 10 most recent posts. I’d like to add a 728 x 160 after the 3rd and 6th post. A prime leaderboard ad slot goes up top.

5. Video: There is a ratings plug in for posts (5 stars); that would be useful for the video section.
Then on the front page, I’d like to list a box with Favorite Videos of the week and month

6. TBP RSS Feed: I need an RSS feed for just the main page content.

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If any Word Press programmers want to contact me about this job, send an email to thebigpicture -at- optonline -dot- net, with your contact info, some site examples or work, estimated time to completion, and rates.