Anyway, I’m proud to bring you the final release of Yukata Summer, which works across all browsers (except IE6.. for now) and all resolutions starting from 800×600. There are a few features I added that are worth mentioning since they may help WordPress theme designers.

• WordPress Dynamic Menu Highlighting
  This highlights the page you are currently surfing on your navigation bar. For this site, the highlights extend to the sub-pages. For example, you are currently surfing this post, which is filed under archives, in turn ‘Archives’ in the navigation is highlighted. Check out the WordPress Codex on Dynamic Menu Highlighting for the base code and Conditional Tags to customize this code to suit your needs – like I have done.

• Updated WordPress Thread Comment
  As some of you may already know, Nanyate?! uses WP Thread Comment to allow responses for comments. I think it’s a nifty tool that, although possibly takes away from the design, allows for conversation amongst the commenters and the author. Having a community of bloggers is the best part about blogging for me. So I will pay a great price to have everyone interact with everyone.

  Anyway, this updated version now uses AJAX and has added a feature to email a commenter when the author replies so…Would you personally like to be notified when I reply to your comment? Thanks a lot! Your responses will really help me!

• Resolution Dependent Javascript
  This is by far the coolest addition I’ve made to Nanyate’s layout!! By adding this javascript, my stylesheet will change according the resolution you are using. Actually if you even change the size of your window, you will see the changes between an 800px window and 800+px window. The 800px’ers have the background scrolling with a serving of dieted version of the content column. Everyone else has the background fixed.

  I adopted this Javascript as a compromise for the scroll-happy people who were complaining that having a scroll background hurt their eyes and the 800×600 resolutioners, who because of the height of their screen can’t see much of the background if it’s fixed. I normally don’t like catering for people’s surfing habits or the 800×600 resolution – especially since the Web 2.0 world has RSS feeds if you feel my design doesn’t suit your tastes. But I’ve made this compromise in the name of the illustrator’s pride. That flower took me many hours and 100+ layers to complete. I wasn’t going to throw it away for those with small resolutions and scroll-happy kids who I don’t expect to understand the pain of designing a translucent layout for all browsers and all resolutions.

  Anyway, this javascript might be useful for those of you whose layouts are designed with 800×600 resolutions only or 1024×748 and above only. I have to admit, I tweaked the javascript little to suit my needs. So, just let me know if you need help with the tweaking.

And finally, I’d like to end this post with a big thank you goes to:

• JJ Magazine for the yukata inspiration
• My housemate for lending the magazine to me
• 72Quadrat.de for the layout inspiration
• Seishido.biz for the cherry blossom brush. It was $1 well spent.
• My subscribers, visitors and commenters whose presence and comments continue to inspire me to work harder on this site.

Related posts:

1. New WordPress Plugins!
2. New Theme For Spring (Alpha)!
3. New Theme: Yukata Summer (Beta)

Having owned a site from the world of Geocities back in 1996, and many frequent hiatuses, the world of Web 2.0 is, for the most part, still quite alien to me. I don’t fully understand the sleuth of social bookmarking sites or the function of Google pageranks (other than the fact that it drives traffic). I have slowly transformed my site to work according to certain Web 2.0 standards such as code validation, ensuring that they are 508 compliant – a standard to assure those with disabilities, particularly the blind, can access my site like everybody else.

Regardless of Web 2.0 standards, I measure Nanyate’s success by delving deep into my Statcounter. While most people only look at their unique visitor count, pageviews, and referrals, I find that miscellaneous statistical information can provide key information for blogger-designers like me (and, I presume, most of you too!). For example:

• Visitor Length – Reflection of your content and design quality

  For me, this is by far the most important number because how long your visitors stay on your site reflects on the quality of your blog content and to a lesser extent, how aesthetically and functionally pleasing your site is. By aesthetics, I don’t mean designing the site with the caliber of NDesign Studio, but just one that I can view without getting a migraine from flashy ads and horrendously tiny text.

  

  My visitor length averages at approximately 4 minutes. Since my blog is a niche blog, mainly appreciated by women and personal blogger-designers, having 50% of my visitors stay on my blog for more than 30 seconds is considered pretty good. I don’t quite understand the 20% of visitors that stay on my site for an hour. But I’m grateful. You must really love my site – more than I do!

• Returning Visits and Feed Subscribers – Barometer of content quality

  Having returning visitors is a sign that your blog is producing original content, and generating interests among others. Unlike visitor length, the percentage is not as important as the actual count. Out of 200 visitors, I have around 50 returning visits and an average of 30 feed subscribers (including comment feed). It means my blog could do better to target more people and expand its niche. But for an almost 4-month old blog, I think it’s not too bad.

  

• Browser – Accessible coding for all

  There are so many designers out their fighting about whether to design for Firefox or IE. A simple look at your statistics can show who you should cater for. For me, out of 500 people, 350 Firefox, 100 use IE and 50 uses Safari. The answer? If you want returning visits or make it into design galleries, design for all of them.

• System Stats – Accessible design for the masses

  Like the browser problem, many people condemn designers for leaving 800×600 resolutions behind. But here is the hard cold facts from my Statcounter: 300 visits from 1280×1024 resolution, 100 visits from 1024×768, 10 from 1152×864 and a measly 5 from 800×600. Do you mean I should jeopardize the ease for 400+ people who have bigger resolutions for the 5 who have 800×600? Of course, I can design sites that have expandable divs, but I don’t think it’s worth the trouble as I’m unwilling to forgo the ‘personal’ part of my personal blog for minor increase in accessibility. (But of course, you may beg to differ.) Besides, with the advent of feeds, they can ignore my inaccessible design for my content, if they wish so.

I’m not sure how you guys analyze your statistics but I hope I have enlightened a few people. And like I said, I’m not Web 2.0 savvy, so…

…do share your views on how you analyze statistics!

FYI, I am using the free version of Statcounter that can only view the latest 500 visitors’ in-depth stats, which can skew my analysis. Also, I blocked my IP, so statistics provided here do not include my own visits to prevent any further distortions.

P.S. A major update, WordPress 2.5 is planned to be released tomorrow, so be sure to standby for the annoying yellow reminder. I guess not. Regardless, I’m psyched! Can’t wait. The Dashboard looks amazing and is AJAXed out!

Related posts:

1. Gratitude: The Joys of Blogging
2. Thank You To My Housemates