I realized a little while ago that my setup for this website isn’t going to work for me longterm. More correctly, it isn’t working for visitors. The cause is simple, yet fundamental - I wasn’t solid on what the site needed to do. More on that below.
The problem I have, however, is that I seem to have time for two initiatives:
- fix the site, or
- continue blogging.
They are not completely mutually exclusive options by nature, but time constraints seem to mold them that way. I am hesitate to make comments on other blogs that would lead visitors here when the site is still inadequate. So, you would think I should fix the site first and then go social-nutso around the web. But I’m in the vibe lately for blogging and have a lot of ideas and mostly written articles waiting; I don’t want to lose momentum while toiling with design comps, sketches and CSS files.
I suppose the solution I’m after is to write at a faster pace to have a larger backlog of posts available, so I can do work on the design and structure instead of actively writing.
Why the site doesn’t work
This website is going to be more of a blog, a dialogue between me and visitors on various topics of mutual interest. Hopefully, we can come up with some pretty cool things together. But, that means I need to fix a fundamental flaw: the blog can’t be secondary.
The home page of jeffsargent.com is targeted toward people wanting to hire me. I don’t even think it’s targeted that well. The better, now adopted, approach will be to nix the home page, put the blog on the home page, and consider a “work” or “hire me” tab that talks to freelance clients. This is similar to Jonathan Snook’s setup, and I like it. I also believe that people are more likely to request my services from reading my blog and learning how I interact with people and see the world then from some marketing talk on the home page.
Also, my intensions for this site have shifted some from recruiting client work to participating helpfully in a community. This represents a change in audience, so naturally the structure and message of the site needs to be re-evaluated anyway.
So consider this an “Under Construction” notice, coupled with a request to keep coming anyway 
All two of you.
Your feedback is, of course, appreciated.
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I know the feeling! There are a lot of things to be done on my sites, but blogging takes a lot of my time and I don’t want site design to get in the way. I have one blog site that I’ve been tinkering with on and off, but I’ve let it sit unused while I get the site like I want it. Meanwhile, I keep thinking, “Ugh! That would make a great first post!” It can be very frustrating.