WIL WHEATON dot NET: Where is my mind?

Wil, it's your blog - you do what you like with it!

I think you know enough to be able to know if it's going to work or not.

Me, I know nothing which is why my blog is an utter mess!

Final wish is that I am the first commenter here...

Wil,

Function sounds good. Go for it. It would be neat to have some of the functionality you mentioned. It will be nice to stay signed in with TypeKey...

Tim in NorCal

I'm a firm believer in function being more important than looks. I'd rather have something work at its best and look plain than have it be pretty but hard to use. My vote is, go for the slim-price look while you are making your transition, and add the tinsel and garland after you know it does what you want it to.

Actually, I don't read it via RSS. But its your blog...do with it what you want. That's the point right?

. . . and if you can see this, it means that commenting is working again. Cool!

Wil - it's your blog.

I read via the web page and not rss.

Do what you want.

Alan

Okay . . . so far, it looks good.

If you happen to see something screwey, please let me know.

I get blog titles via rss and read the entries at your site. That said, I agree with the general sentiment that you should do whatever you darn well please with it--whatever makes it easiest and most effective.

Long time reader, first post. I read your blog via RSS at home and online at work. Online more than RSS though

The site works fine, as you may be able to see, there's a tiny problem with opening the top left and right navigation for the comments though.

Keep up the good work Wil!

Something's up with the sidebars, but you probably know that. And who cares, so long as the content's there, right?

(comfortable, not drinking too much, regular exercise at the gym three days a week)

I read your blog on line rather that RSS too. Front page looks normal but this comments page has gone a bit weird.

Look forward to seeing the new and improved design, whenever it's ready :-)

I'm getting "failed opening.." messages on the sidebars and the header, but only in comments view, the main site displays ok.

As above, side bars are broked in comments view.

I always come to the web page, as I prefer to see your work, not some RSS feed. But thats justme, I'm anal like that.

Yeah, looks like the template or whatever it is MT uses for the comments pages needs to have a few "../"s added to the include()s. Should be include("../../../../mttop.php") for example. Other than that, looks good.

Yeah, it looks like a plugin went a bit wonky on the comment page. Nothing very big, I'm sure.

I'm all for function over appearance. Go for it!

I'd also really like it if Typekey kept me logged in until dissolution do me and the web part. One less thing to deal with.

I started reading mostly through RSS once I upgraded to Mac OS X 10.4 (with Safari's built-in RSS reader). I do think design of the main site is important - especially since that's what first-time visitors will see. They've got to like it before they RSS bookmark it. But there's nothing wrong with the clean white design that (I think) is the default MT template. Exempting a color-by-author code change I recently made, that's what I use.

I should also say that I just set up my first WordPress blog (for a town organization) and I'm dazzlingly impressed. There are a few things MT has over WP (especially caching which might be a big deal for a busy site like yours). I was able to do some serious customization in WP in 2-3 hours, having never seen the code before, that would have taken much longer in MT. And I know the MT code pretty well. Color me impressed.

I use the RSS Feed linkd from my site. BTW, ever thought of using WordPress? I've converted from MT to it and I like it a LOT better.
But anyway, I think the RSS is a good idea, as far as I know there are a lot of blog sites that actually pull the info from your site giving you better rankings from the RSS too.
But that's my opinion, and you're entitled to it. :P

Actually, I mostly use the web site instead of RSS - because my employer blocks aggregator sites like bloglines. (I guess they can't control the content of the feeds, so they block the whole site.)

Anyway, I can live with a 'work in progess' home page for a while. Content's more important than style!

I read your site as-is, simply because while RSS is nifty, I'd rather visit *your* site than the LiveJournal feed. That way, I can feen over the cool stuff you slap on the sidebars from time to time.

Yep, comment view is definitely borked using Firefox 1.0.7 on WinXP SP2.

Like most people have said, it's your site - you could have pink text on a yellow background and people would still visit it. Well, okay, even I would be compelled to switch to RSS feeds at that point. :)

Hey Wil,
I visit the site most of the time using Firefox's live bookmark feature (simplified RSS feed). As this moment, I'm using Safari on my 10.4 mac. To quote Shamanix, your comment view be Borked.

I've never gotten into using the RSS viewers that pull the whole article down into flat text, I love to use RSS to quickly view headlines, but I really like going to the site and seeing the design and/or content. Well, that is unless you go with that Pink text on a yellow background idea....yeesh.

I have your website bookmarked, and read it through a browser. As long as the design looks nice and doesn't distract, I don't care how it looks, because I'm here to read what you _write_. That's what's important to me.

I agree with the crowd. As long as you have a backup of your database so we don't lose any blog goodness then rock your c*ck off (as the punk chicks I know say). I'm still on 2.661 MovableType and I'm jealous of your move to 3.2.

Napoleon: ''Lucky!''

What the hell are RSS and MT? I just go to the website.

Like everyone else, I support going ahead. It's mostly the content we're after and seeing as we're all mindless fan zombies ;) we've got faith that the changes you make will be pleasing in the end. It may take a while for us to grow accustomed to them, but we'll adapt. That's what we monkeys do.

As a big friggin geek, I heartily advise you to go ahead and bash away at the site. Just make sure you keep a backup of everything so if it gets *totally* borked, you can restore it. But once you've got that backup made... Go to town! :-D

Just please no blinking text, or baby Jesus will cry. But I'm pretty sure you already knew that. ;-)

Well, both sides of the screen where your navigation is are messages about 'Warning: Failed opening '../../nav.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/share/pear') in /home/httpd/vhosts/wilwheaton.net/httpdocs/mt/archives/2005/09/32_and_a_questi.php on line 88'

As far as the formatting, do what you watn. I'm a newsreader person that only comes to the site to comment. You should figure out how to put ads in the RSS feed so we can continue to support your site don't want to be a leech or anything ;)

Yikes! I thought it would be cool to check in here for a few days and see what all this(you Wil) is all about! I think you do some cool stuff in RW(Real World), but it's depressing to read what I do here. Maybe I'll poke my head in, in a few weeks and see how the new design works out.

Take care, "Ol' Boy!"
~HHB/Sarah

Form will always follow function. It is the natural way of things. So sayeth the Tao of blogging and website design.

Have you thought about trying out Serendipity? (www.s9y.org)

I moved to it after trying almost every other thing out there. I have found it easy to import from moveable type and easy to customize with smatry templates.