Time to Change the Interface of This Blog

I think my blog has too much content in regards to my notes (despite the vastness of topics not covered), and I think the time has come to restructure it.

When I first made this site, it was with the idea of sharing my notes, then sprinkle some other stuff in, like my training log. So I made the headlines of the site resemble all of the various subtopics and topics of notes I scanned & uploaded. With few notes in the beginning, this was not a problem. But as the number of those grew, the interface is no longer optimal. And along with my training log, the site has become a site where I upload a lot of “other things” (also known as my manic projects of the day/month/period).

A barely exhaustive list of sections for the notes on both desktop and mobile

A very long scroll in the “Other” section on the desktop

On mobile the whole menu heirarchy is expanded and displayed on tapping, making the navigation very dissatisfying with a lit of scrolling and not knowing where you are

In the future, I will probably reorganize the headlines and have the notes be accessible only via the current “Index” page, renaming it to “Notes”. And maybe I need to look into another template altogether (though I do like the simplicity of this one). Accessing specific notes from the front page will no longer be possible, but the interface will be much cleaner.

On Monetizing

When I decided to make a website to share my notes (which may or may not be useful for others), I hoped to monetize it by having a few people willing to buy the highest resolution scans and use them however they see fit. I don’t want to upload the highest resolution scans for free as I think it’s overkill over the web; visitors’ mobile bandwidth will be annihilated. As someone who himself believes in FOAM (Free Open Access Meducation – Medical education for anyone, anywhere, anytime), I was prepared for not having many people buy my notes. But I wasn’t for the number being zero.

The bills (including hosting this website) still need to be paid. Or else I’ll have to close down the website. Web hosting is still expensive for us in the third world doing it alone.

As an alternative, I've decided to put web ads on the site, despite the fact that I love clean, easy to load websites. Initially I tried to use AdSense, but for some reason, I just couldn't get it to work with my site, saying that it's not constructed well enough, too many images (well there are a lot of scans, duh), etc. I've decided to move on to another agency.

So now I've just started trying out Chitika. So far I've been able to put their ad codes into the website, but I don't know 1) what's the optimal number and placement of ads, and 2) how to make the desktop and mobile experiences both consistently a win-win setup. Now I do realize that a majority of my visitors visit using mobile devices. Too many ads is definitely more of a killer to the mobile experience compared to the desktop.

To make way for ads, I'll try uploading higher resolution scans that's somewhere in the middle; not too big that'll kill mobile bandwidth, but good enough for those using "Retina-class displays". And of course, those scans will not be for sale. I'll probably follow the 220 dpi resolution of Retina MacBook.

If I don't enough, I'll consider my second attempt at having a "permanent" web presence (I did have a Blogger thing a long time ago) another failure and just shut this site down (as again, it's expensive).