Blog note: Last updated on January 25, 2026
In the past, I’d jump on a blog and begin tinkering, moving posts and pages around. Changing the color scheme, the theme, and eventually the font styles. Then I’d add lots of stuff, then delete lots of stuff, making subtle changes here and there until the look and feel was just right. But, I never took the time to document what I did.
Why?
I don’t know, likely because being lost in the sauce of creating, made me lose sight of another chance to write about it, how paradoxical. A lot of the changes on this blog were driven by the idea of less is more. How can I convey just enough meaningful information without the bloat of what was no longer meaningful or relevant ? This was particularly important for me since I moved my old blog over to Pagecord. It was also refreshing to just delete, delete, delete, and start over. As I plan to make this blog my passion project, I’ll share updates here as things change.
Sorted A-Z...
Content
- Listed blog posts as links on the Homepage, specifically Featured Posts, then learned about dynamic variables and re-wrote my Featured and Latest Posts with simple code. No need to manually add links! This helped me find the tag feature and tag all my posts.
- Once I figured out how to tag I added the tag codes to the Homepage. This made the tags into a bulleted list, but then I noticed other bloggers had it separated by commas. Once I figured that out, then I changed it to match.
- Added a My Favorites list of things I like on the Homepage. This took up space after adding dynamic content for my post listings. I also realized these favorites can eventually make their way to my Now page. So deleted My Favorites, but saved it as a draft for future use.
- Removed About Me page title on the homepage
- Downsized the bio statement and moved the rest to the about me portion of the home page.
- Revised content in the About Me section of the homepage to more accurately reflect the purpose of the blog.
- Changed photo on the Home page to focus on nature photography, may consider changing this periodically.
Look and Feel
- Changed text colors I don’t know how many times. Trying to go with a garden theme and a green color palette. We’ll see how that goes, just know it will continue to change over time. Trying to see how to make color scheme looks good in dark mode. So far not totally satisfied, but very inspired by Sylvia's Noodling Nook and What's up with James? and their blog designs.
- Changed blog roll to cards because I like the snippet feature.
- Changed font from Sans Serif to Serif.
- Changed font color to better match hospital photo
- Added photo of Winter Haven Hospital to my homepage.
- Changed the photo from black and white to its' original color, a beautiful sunset yellow.
- CSS was added! I'm not as creative as I'd like to be, but plugged in the code to center my blog title, bio, and navigation. That was neat to try out. Maybe, as I get a little savvier and have more time, I'll try out different style sheets.
- Changed the icons for Now, Blog, and Archive from colorful circles to arrows that better match the site aesthetic.
- Removed my avatar header so that the homepage was not clogged with too many images.
Navigation
- Added Homepage link as not everyone will know to click on my avatar to return to the home page. I learned this back in library school when I was getting my information architecture certificate and came across the 10 Usability Heuristics (see #6).
- Added Blog link when I created the home page, making it easy to view my blog roll.
- Added then removed the About Me page
- Added then removed the Publications Page
- Added then removed the Bloggy Garden page
- Added emojis to all the navigation links because I just love them. EmojiDB has a great variety that you can copy/paste to posts and blogs without all the ads.
- Added custom domain name I got from Porkbun and pointed my default URL aidy.pagecord.com to www.aidy.blog
- Added an Archive page
- Moved navigation links around after removing Bloggy Garden. Now it's:
Home | Now | Blog | Archive | BlueSky
- Added a blog title, Aidy + Blog, went back and forth, because I can spend hours trying to find the write blog title and stuck with this. May change in the future.
- After seeing a similar set up on a blog called 82MHz, I removed responding to blog posts via email and redirected readers to BlueSky. Since my two main areas for highlighting the blog are the blog itself and BlueSky it makes sense to have this response loop. Now all posts have this on the bottom.
- Added then removed the Blog page. For some reason it did not update like the other pages and this could be because the page was synced up as a separate link in the nav bar? I'm not sure. But with the home page pointing to my latest and featured blog posts and the Archives pointing to all the posts, this seemed redundant. It may come back in the future, will shall see.
Pages
- Started a Homepage, then deleted it when there wasn’t enough content, then re-added it for reasons (see below).
- Started a Start Here page, realized that could all go on a home page. I liked seeing how other bloggers made it easier on the reader to plop all the necessary way finding on the home page. Deleted start here page, and put content in home page.
- Started an About Me page, realized I could write a paragraph or two on the homepage with links, et viola! Deleted About Me page.
- Started a Publications page based on my old blog’s content and as many academic bloggers do, then realized I can write one sentence with links and not have to manually add article citations. Deleted the Publications Page.
- Started a Bloggy Garden page, to curate my virtual blog travels then decided to leave links in blog posts.
- Blogs can be discovered in other ways like a discovery feed, see Now Now Now, and Ye Olde Blogroll, Pagecord Shuffle or a Google Search. I may bring this back, but as a post not a page. Another reason for this is because mobile navigation links begin to stack on each other and I wanted to keep it all in line.
- Started an Archive page. At first I had them listed in a long list, but then decided to subdivide them by year. Copied this code to make the quick switch.
Thinking About...
- A Field Notes page to track my research and academic reading adventures
- Going back to an About Me page or not.
- Changing the color scheme - it may just good with my mood or the weather 🌦️
AW