EXPERIMENT TIME I hope you can help me with! I was being crushed by widget overload — I go to many blogs, I see too many boxes, buttons, and links to click on. Too many widgets.
Over time, I've stripped mine down to simplify choice and present "core essentials". But there's still other stuff I wanna show off! So… what I ended up doing was using the Ad Rotator plugin, which displays a random bit each time you reload my blog ON THE LEFT, LOOK!!!! — right now, it could be a video, my Twitter feed, etc.
BTW, I found Vimeo videos "intelligently" get their chrome removed when you embed them at small sizes and only show a play/pause button when you hover over them. VERY nice. blip.tv vids don't do that, but Aaron from blip.tv (thx!) rapidly reached in to tell me their Legacy Player is chromeless, which I'll have to… play with soon.
I plan to play with some "fake ads" and other lunatic whimsicality in the future, but before I make those mistakes…
What would you like to see in the box o' RANDOM FUN?
(The quickest stuff I can add are any embeddable widgets and videos I have up!)
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Maybe some bigger photos (you have enough of them
) instead of the smallish flickr thingy on the right ? =)
Torley I really enjoy the piano vids so much I added 3 of them to my Myspace blog with a link to the piano vid page on your site. To my horror I found the link disabled this morning so I came looking to see where the lovely vids went. Your music is so beautiful and you are so generous to share your talent, I did wonder why so much for FREE. The random box is ingenious! Although I love the piano solos your other talents are also uplifting so the random idea is perfect.
I would just like to see you continue to be your inventive self because it is inspiring and you do it so well. BRAVO
Torley,
You may just want to make an entire page separate from the side bar to find "other stuff" that you'd like to show off. I may see something random one day only to come back and be confused where to find it.
I've had similar problems myself on my own blog and have since stripped it down lots. I created an "I Am" page that shows people all the different services that I am on where they can find my stuff. (Similar to the "on X I am" service without the spammyness)
That random bit is cool.
add link to "how-torley-records-and-renders-his-movies-for-youtube"! cus me can not find that! grrrr!
@Dutch-Coyote: Good suggestion, or maybe an evolving photo slideshow, a pictobrowser or something… HMMM THERE'S AN IDEA! *researches*
@2B: Oh my gosh! I wonder how that link disabled? Which link was it? I'll hunt it down if there's a problem. Thank-you for all your support!
@Dedric: Ah yes. I wonder if there's a way to show all the random content on a single page for ease-of-findage, automatically. It's just an "Ad Rotator" widget which is serving me in a different capacity.
@Ole: Hehe, that's a text link, I believe you're looking for: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Torley_Linden/Vidtut_process