It’s interesting. What you’re describing hadn’t occurred to me, obviously. My intention was to collect all secondary information and place it in the same area for organization, and also so that users don’t have to move their mouse from one end of the screen to the other. To me, topics/categories and recent entries are similar in function (i.e. prompt users to browse more)… But you see how everybody is different… Your observation is definitely something I’d be interested to validate with more people. You may not be alone there, and if that’s the case, I’d love to know…

There is another reason why I feel that the two sidebars should be separate. The topics sidebar is like looking at the contents in the beginning of a book (or like the original Yahoo! search). On the other hand, the “Recent Entries” side bar is somewhat like looking directly at the index at the back of the book (or like Google search). This isn’t a strictly consistent analogy, but my mind organizes it that way. So I would convert this logical separation into a physical separation on the webpage, by putting the Recent Entries sidebar way over at the right.

Now that I reread my comment, this is all sounding vaguely new-age-nerdy. I hope the reasoning makes sense though. (Now I am off to examining the order of the fields in *my* sidebar ;) )

However, I’m interested in your suggestion. Does it come from your desire to see the full list of topics expanded in post pages, as opposed to presented as a select menu?… Or wait, are you talking about the placement of sidebars on the home page only?

Petie,
I’m glad you mentioned that… It’s actually something I wanted to validate. In my plan and design, the comments text within the playground caption should be a link. However, the way how I have set up “hidden” comments for playground entries didn’t allow me to link directly from the home page without recoding that piece. It is doable, and I should definitely enable that link… I’ll work on it the coming days.

“baby Stultz”… sounds cute… ;-)

One small thing - and I may be wrong on this, but I can’t comment on the artwork from the main page. You have to click on the artwork to be able to access the comments. (playground and artwork are being used interchangeably here for me.)

I smiled at the comment of baby DiPaolo above. :) We were discussing when we would next go up to SLC this week, too. Chris has a free SW ticket we’re saving just for that. We might have to wait to see if there will be a baby Stultz…

1. I thought about it. Many people get to my post pages directly from Google search results. So you’re absolutely right: They won’t know that the image on the header is a fragment of content. To them, the playground entry would be “decoration”. So yes: I may end up adding the little caption to all pages.

I do have a separate feed for the playground entries (which is now better displayed on the home page). However, my FeedBurner plugin is redirecting it to the main feed for post entries. It’s on my list to fix. I have noticed though that one of my readers is being able to get to that feed without redirection to the main FB feed. Wonder what feed reader he’s using.

2. You may well be the one and only who ever notices that. Thank you!… I actually tried to remove display of the select box altogether when JS is off (instead of saying it doesn’t work), but it’s not easy the way I coded it.

3. YES!… smart-ass… :)
However, “entradas” is not the right word. It means something else. I’ve been thinking a lot, trying to find the right one. You know: I don’t know any web jargon in my mother language. Need to find some Spanish blogs to figure it out.

4. I know! I know! Alignment of buttons is my nemesis at work. I’ve tried all kinds of things and can’t get it to align perfectly in all browsers. This was the least worse of all options I explored. I’m thinking of replacing the button by an image, but then it won’t resize if people want it larger.

Thank you again, Danny. Please keep the comments coming if you find anything else that should be improved. I’ll be happy to help next time I’m in town. We’re thinking of going early next year for baby DiPaolo.