It's been a while since I updated you on plans for KTracy.com. That's partly because I'm pretty happy with KTracy.com at the moment and how functional it is for showing off articles, short format updates, creating sitemaps, etc.

With that said, the design of KTracy.com is supposed to be constantly evolving and the longer things stay the same, the more big ideas I tend to want to bring to the table. And since winter tends to be a little slower here in the snow belt, it's a great time to take on some new web design challenges. Here's what I'm looking at trying to do.

Update Left Sidebar

The left sidebar design is similar to the web design I used from 2001 (mimicking the 2001 WhiteHouse.gov web design) until 2005. When I relaunched KTracy.com in 2021, I wanted to recapture the magic and fun of the early golden era of KTracy.com. It was a decent starting point, but upon further consideration, I think I prefer the 2008-2011 web design featuring a right sidebar with semi-transparent blue backgrounds with a full body picture of me coming up from behind the top of it. The idea of me popping up behind the sidebar was inspired by Mitt Romney's 2008 campaign website when he had a video of himself walking across the bottom of the page using Flash. That was super obnoxious, but nevertheless impressive. I replicated that the best way I could, adding some neat z-index stuff in the process.

I actually didn't like the right sidebar then, preferring it on the left, but that 2009 redesign was largely meant to fix a early mobile phone viewing problem where the content on the left sidebar would appear on every page before the content in the main article. Since before then, from 2007 through 2008, I had both a left and right sidebar; this was becoming a pretty big problem.

Although it was on the wrong side, that was by far the coolest sidebar I had. However, that was 14 years ago. I think we can improve upon it quite a bit. The main improvement will be in the picture of myself at the top; which I plan to animate in an interactive way. It's a bit of a surprise, but I can't wait to show you what I have in mind.

KTracy.com Automation Server

The KTracy.com Automation Server is not itself something that will appear on KTracy.com. However, it's going to automatically update format and upload content to the KTracy.com FTP; which is hosted remotely. The KTracy Automation Server is going to be a Raspberry Pi I keep in my office. The details of how it works will probably be kept secret for security reasons, but I plan to use it for everything that Multcloud is failing me with right now.

That means bringing back the Fitbit stats so you all can hold me accountable for getting 10k steps a day. It also means getting the Recent Picture thing working again without me having to manually update it.

I also hope to automate the creation of the Sitemap.

Moving forward, I hope that will lead to the automation of short format content from my cell phone, too. Microformat and micropub are things I've largely given up on until we get that KTracy Automation Server setup.

Author Information to the Right Sidebar

I don't really like how my author information comes in above the content on every post. It's actually created some issues posting my content on social media as the author thumbnail tends to come in as the default article picture.

Instead, I would like it to come in on the right sidebar with a brief autobiography and possibly a link for a guest author or future contributors. I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to do that, but I'll clearly have to set a variable on the content page and pull that value in the right sidebar file.

Bringing Back the Store

The KTracy.com Store was shut down a while ago. When I left KTracy Manor back in December, I expected to be in a new house in just a couple months. I would have been able to make that work, but it took the better part of a year to get in a new house. There was no way I could keep my art supplies, Silhouette decal cutter, heat press, woodworking supplies, art prints, comics, and more to a shared home office with Katie.

Once Katie and I are settled, the store is coming back online. Unlike before when we used WooCommerce, this next iteration is going to use a Square Store. When I closed the store earlier this year, I deleted the last WordPress (and last CMS) installation on my server. Since then, things have been running really smoothly and there has been no server load from bots and hackers looking for ways to crack into KTracy.com. I hate hosting that somewhere other than on my own server, but it just makes sense from a business perspective.

Remove Ads... after the next payment

Ad revenue has been all over the place since we brought them back. Google pays out every time you hit $100 and we're at around $81 right now. As I see it, Google owes me $81, and the only way to get it is to keep ads until Google owes me $100. After that, I'm likely never using Google Adsense again unless something changes.

I'll write more about Adsense in the future, but I don't like it.

Store Ads

Once we get rid of Adsense, the only ads on KTracy.com will be ones paid directly to me (no Adsense-like middleman) and ads for the awesome products we're selling on the KTracy.com store.

Graphic Overhauls

I want to make sure we are using the smallest files possible to create the web design. That means switching from *.jpg and *.png files to the new *.webp everywhere. I also want to overhaul some minor design elements throughout the site, such as the horizontal lines and menus.

2024 should be a really pretty year for KTracy.com. I'm really looking forward to showing you my vision!