Blog Goals for 2009

Written by David Walsh on Wednesday, December 31, 2008

My blog grew substantially during 2008. I gained thousands more RSS subscribers, my MooTools skills took a giant leap, and I even branched out in jQuery a little bit. That said, I feel like the blog just beginning. I’ve outlined some goals for 2009 — any feedback or requests would be appreciated.

1. New Redesign

I’m not happy with the current “design”. It’s too plain and even though I’m not a designer, I think I could do a lot better. I have a new redesign that’s about 25% done that I really love so far and hope to get out by February 1st. I will be giving peeks via Twitter very soon.

2. Walk the Walk

I write a lot of useful MooTools scripts. The problem is that I don’t actually use many of them on my site. My goal is to avoid overdoing my the MooTools “flash bang” effects but tastefully add enhancements here and there. I think people will like the new effects a lot.

3. More Interaction

I’ve recently implemented polls and I’m going to strive to get more of a “community” feel for the site. I may also add a very basic chat feature in the sidebar. I’d also like to schedule a monthly chat session where I’m available for questions about both web and non-web topics. Not sure how many people would be interested in that though. I’ve decided not to implement forums.

4. Continue the Moo-foolery

I want to continue to write interesting and thought-provoking Moo scripts. This includes original works and ports of existing jQuery / Prototype scripts. MooTools has made writing javascript (and subsequent MooTools posts) fun and I hope my enthusiasm for it becomes infectious.

5. Create a Facebook App or WordPress Plugin

I’ve been putting off doing either of these because of the amount of maintenance that goes into them. I don’t want to release a plugin and then let it go to crap. Hopefully I find the inspiration to follow through on creating a great plugin or app.

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December 31 / #

Paul Davis says:

I’m defiantly looking forward to the redesign. =D

Also, I think a Wordpress Plug-in would be better received. I think Facebook has to many applications. And a wordpress plug-in would be a better use of your skill. IMO
=]

December 31 / #

Luke says:

I’ll be keeping an eye on your twitter mate, gotta say I have already spend a fair few hours trawling through the useful posts you’ve managed to write here, looking forward to more :)

And yes, definitely go down the Wordpress Plugin route, its pretty simple to do and with your PHP and JS knowledge your likely to get a nice traffic spike like what happened to me when I did the first version of mine!

December 31 / #

david says:

Thank you for the suggestions. I was leaning more toward a WP plugin. I have no idea what I’d do for Facebook, but it probably wouldn’t have been very useful. I would’ve just done it to do it. I’m sure I could think of something fun for WordPress.

December 31 / #

cssProdigy says:

Great David. Looking forward to the new MooTools scripts and the Redesign. A facebook App? hmm….

January 01 / #

Ryan Rampersad says:

I’m looking forward to the moo-foolery!

January 01 / #

dave says:

Just one of your silent readers but I will say you and your site have taught me a great deal this year. Looking at your approaches and the slight incorporation of humor as made this one of the best sites for learning, inspiration and entertainment.

I thank you and look forward to your posts and advice in 2009.

January 02 / #

Ryan says:

looking forward to more mootools related posts.

January 03 / #

Keith Wolf says:

I look forward to seeing what you’ll add. I just really hope you maintain the already very clean look and feel that seems to be escaping even the simplest sites these days. Peace,

Keith

January 05 / #

hanoi says:

You should care of your website’s usability.

It is hard to find and read old articles. Is there an easy way to have a list of old articles which are displayed in categories?
So many ads on your blog (I can see why…)

February 11 / #

Geoff says:

Just like many other fans here I’m also looking forward to more mootools scripts, you are an asset to the mootools community!
I also hope that more people will get infected by the mootools bug just by reading your articles from past year. They where very usefull to me and I’ve learned a lot by it.

Btw, your webdesign is good enough to me, it’s easy readable but if you do a redesign, just make sure you keep the old posts for new fans that will come ;-)