Simple

No not the meerkat. This is a post about how I come to the decision to launch my blog as quick as possible. I’ve cut down on features. I’ve minimised the amount of time I have to design any thing (and the subsequent redesigns and then getting bored of the project) and code it. And it’s out there.

I’ve mentioned before that I am in awe of blogs from the likes of Jason Santa Maria, Khoi Vinh, Gregory Wood and many more. They all do amazing things. And me being the eternal optimist and believer in my own ability thought that I could do that same. I could write loads of interesting content. I could add my social networking stuff in one place. I could have a blog that is a tumble blog and a life stream and a photo blog all in one. I also believe I’m 7 feet tall, kill men by the hundreds and shoot bolts of lightning from my arse.

I digress. These people have been blogging for ages. And they’re good at it. And they probably have more interesting online lives than mine. I don’t upload pictures to flickr at all. I post on twitter occasionally. I don’t update facebook hardly ever. I email myself cool links and never read them again. I’m not that good at keeping up with things online. Why am I even bothering?

37signals are also very good at what they do. I keep meaning to read or buy Getting real. I really do. It’s great for things like this apparently. So from the random scatterings I’ve read from their wonderful blog I thought long and hard. Lets cut the blog down to the bare bones. What does a blog need to do? Well get my thoughts out there. I may not have an interesting online life but I have a lot to say.

It’s often daunting to think about how many pages you should be creating for a wordpress theme. An Archive page and a page for archives. Two separate php pages for similar functions? Right? Even I’m confused.

Matt Brett is a designer that I have often admired. One of his posts states he has 14 files at the end of his theme development. 14 files? It took me an ages to release a one page site. I’ll never be finished at this rate.

So I wrote a list of things I REALLY REALLY wanted on my blog. I got 5 points. One of these was about colour. One about a grid and typography. One was the ability to make Jason Santa Maria style posts. One was to have a nice home page. And the final thing was to link to my forthcoming vcard site and my lifestream. Hang on a minute. That’s the answer. I have a life stream (that no one reads). I have designed a vcard site (that no one will care about). I don’t need that information on my blog as well (they probably won’t read it anyway). So that was that. What do I need. A home page, archives, categories and a single page.

So I might need a few more php pages than those 4 but it means its quick. Quick and painless. And simple. I don’t think many people are even going to read the blog. Let alone want to see my lifestream or contact me. I’m just not that interesting. Apart from the shooting lightning bolts from my arse.

And now I had an achievable goal. I can do this.

I am william Wallace.

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