My next step in the engrossing re-design that you have, no doubt, come here to read about, a step I have not yet begun, is to mark up my content in chunks that make sense. Part of this implies coming up with what content I want and on which pages. To accomplish this, I’m also going to have to re-work my Movable Type templates to reflect the functionality I want.

In my push toward lean, more spare pages, I would like to remove as many chunks of data, content and navigation from the main page and place the data on their own. For example, rather than a long list of categories to the side, maybe I could have a link to a “categories” page which then lists something like this:

• Blah Category
1. entry one
2. entry two
3. ...
• Blah Blah Category
1. entry one
2. entry two
3. ...

Additionally, rather than having category archive pages that feature all of the entries in a category, I want something like this:

Category

• entry one: entry one excerpt goes like this…


• entry two: entry two excerpt does a little dance like this…


• ...

So the next step is a two-stepper at least. I need to decide on the structure of the content in terms of presentation (but not, mind you, lay-out or “presentation” of the content), and mark the content up appropriately. Next, I will then re-work all of the templates in Movable Type to reflect the functionality I want out of the site BEFORE I begin to apply any style (presentation) to the content.

Now I know many of my tens of readers are confused when I say I am going to work on the presentation but not the presentation, so let me rephrase that. The template work will relate to the ORGANIZATION of the content. In other words, it will control WHEN you see the content and HOW you access the content. The other type of presentation I was referring to is the way the content LOOKS in your browser or, for that matter, whatever type of device you choose to use. Remember the predicted explosion of handheld web access devices a few years back? Wasn’t that cute? And then wasn’t it funny when everybody figured out that reading websites on a little bitty device sucked ass? And wasn’t it cool when people realized this and put tiny, utilitarian apps for handhelds out there, like this one? But I digress.

The redesign proceeds apace. At least if apace means slower than a geriatric on a steamy Southern afternoon, or at the speed at which my brain tells me “don’t touch that pan, it’s fucking hot” right before I decide to touch the pan, then that’s about right. If you come to this site and it makes you long for “Generic Beer,” please stay with me. I am slammed (slightly) at work and have A LOT going on in my non-web-oriented life right now and will get it done as I get the opportunities.

< b>UPDATE

I’m starting. Comments are probably going to break. Things, which are already very ugly indeed, are about to get much more hideous. Be careful.