Anyway, it’s finally done. I have split up the blog into two parts, as previously promised. A “professional” one, about usability and user interfaces, and a personal one (”musings”) wherein I pretend to write.

I know the blog name is a little egotistical, but hey, it helps build the personal brand.

Buckwilson.me

Buckwilson.me/musings

So redirect your RSS reader over there, I shall resume posting soon!

We’ll see how smoothly this goes…

The design can be found here: New Blog Design!

I am currently contemplating the direction of this particular blog, and I am halting posts until I make a decision. 

It has occurred to me that, in order to maintain a good audience, a blog needs to have a clear focus. While I may be interested in a great many things, I recognize that my readers may not be interested in the same things. This leads me to categorize what I enjoy posting about and perhaps split the posts between this blog, and a more personal blog I intend to put on buckwilson.me.

Things I enjoy posting : 

• Opinions on User Interface design (I am, after all, a UI designer by trade)
• Photoshop and design tutorials (I enjoy sharing what I know, although I am aware I am no expert in the subject)
• JavaScript and jQuery tutorials
• Opinions on starting / running a business (I have started and sold a company)
• Personal marketing / personal brand building
• UI / Design analysis of other sites / apps 
• Opinions on random junk that I like (tech / web related)
• Opinions on random junk in my life (non tech / web related)
• Random, random musings to practice my writing ability

What I’ve decided to do is create a super-blog. That is, a blog with not only distinct categories, but separate pages (and, perhaps, colors / themes) for each topic. I’ve yet to figure out what the top-level “categories” will be, but the idea is to give them each their own RSS feed so those who don’t care about the other junk can simply ignore it.

I typically just use Wordpress, but perhaps I’ll experiment something with a little more power such as Expression Engine. Managing multiple blogs on a single site seems difficult, but perhaps it’s as simple as restricting by category in the Wordpress Loop. If anyone has any experience building customizing themes, let me know.

In addition to pulling information out into different blogs, I need to provide some sorely needed information about myself: contact information, projects I am working on, a brief “résumé”.

All of this will live on buckwilson.me. I’m not sure what I will do with keepthewebweird. Perhaps I will finally create the site I meant to create when I purchased the domain…

I’d like to take a short moment to give you an update on my newest time sink: Listotron. Listotron is a collaborate project between Adam Wulf and myself, and we’re aiming for it to be the best online list maker ever. I will outline design philosophies and features in upcoming Listotron blog posts.

Above all else, we are using this project to learn the art of self-promotion– a skill both he and I are lacking in. As such, we will become absolutely transparent in our methods, decisions, and even code.

If you are at all interested in everything it takes to create a web-based application, I highly encourage you to keep an eye on the Listotron blog and Twitter account. We will be posting many tutorials and insights ranging from high-level business decisions to providing code. Most notably will be long posts on User Experience and User Interface processes and decisions.

Simply put, we’re betting on a strong correlation between how much we share with the community and the amount of publicity the product gets. “Selfless Promotion”, if you will.

Did you see how to launch a great site? No PR. Site isn’t turned on yet. No one called and begged for coverage. Lots of early fans. FTW!

The logic here is absolutely flawless. I see no problems with this plan whatsoever.

I am, of course, typing this with as much sarcasm as I can muster.

I just wanted to check in and let everyone know that I have not abandoned this blog in the least. I have left my day job, sold my company moved across the country, and am in the process of settling into my typical routine.

In addition, I am working with the jQuery UI team to create some more themes for that project. I’m thrilled to be able to contribute to a library that has renewed my interest and passion for client-side scripting and has allowed me to rapidly prototype as well as create some pretty hefty apps with ease.

If you are a designer or developer, I highly recommend checking jQuery out, even if you’re not much into JavaScript. Once it clicks, you’ll be able to do some pretty tremendous stuff quickly and cleanly.

For interested parties, I, along with my fantastic wife, will start up a personal blog as well and we will be blogging to keep in touch with friends and family back in Texas (and all over, really). In about a week I will be posting regularly again (hopefully about twice a week) and get this blog going! I have some articles queued up but not complete, including more JavaScript tutorials, design tutorials, design inspiration, icon creation, and UI tidbits!

Thanks to everyone for their fantastic support!