Blog Organization & New Pages: Currently Reading, Currently Watching

So, I'm taking the advice of All Around Cool Cat Drance over at Once More Unto the Breach and adding a few more pages on the site in order to try to make the front page less cluttered. 

In this new age of social media, people seem to like to use lists of what they're reading, watching, listening to, etc. in order to advertise what kind of person they are.  It's sort of taken the place of wearing an obscure band t-shirt back in the 80's or 90's as a way to say, "You want to know who I am?  Listen to this band.  They describe me as a person."

I always enjoy reading these kinds of lists because they help me discover new things that I might be interested in.  To that end, I've added a Currently Reading page, where I provide very short one or two sentence summaries of the books I'm currently reading, which includes novels, non-fiction, comics, and game books.  I've also added the cleverly titled Currently Watching page, detailing TV shows, DVDs, and online programs I'm watching.  I'll also add theatrical release movies from time-to-time.  Both of these pages will be updated as needed, and I'll try to mention on the blog when they change.

Another thing I've mentioned before is how my blog roll has gotten a little crazy, divided up in to a bunch of different categories: Geek News & Culture, RPG Blogs, Publishers, Authors, Comics, Science Fiction, Friends, Advertising... all of those, plus the list of the most popular blogs this week takes up a lot of space down the right side of the blog.  To that end, I'm considering making the following changes:

  1. Move all of the non-RPG blogs to a separate static page, like the Currently Reading or Currently Watching pages.  They'd still be organized by topic, but it gets them off of the front page to help make things a little less cluttered.  It seems to me that most people that visit my site are really coming from the OSR community, to the RPG blog roll is probably the most relevant.  
  2. I'm toying with also creating a "Currently Playing" static page, and moving that information off the front page.  Although you'd have to dig to find out the information rather than seeing it right up front, it's another way to try to clean up the front page a bit.  
  3. I'm probably going to shorten the "Most Popular Posts This Week" from 10 down to five, again, for clarity of reading.  
Those of you who read the blog regularly - what are your thoughts on the above changes?  I'm curious if you ever look at the links in the blog roll?  

Thanks in advance for your input!

Hanging: Home Office
Drinking: tap water
Listening: "Some Day My Prince Will Come (Alternate Take)" by Miles Davis

Comments

  1. I continue to wrestle with these questions. I have no answers, but constantly strive for simplicity.

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  2. Hey Martin! Thanks for the props, and for the "cool cat" appellation! I see you've added the Currently Playing tab, and the shortened favorite posts in the sidebar. I think these are great changes! Looks great in here!

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