It’s been a great year for Techinch.com, and after being online for 15 months, it is time for some changes. Reading Seth Godin’s excellent Poke the Box eBook inspired me to work harder than ever on Techinch and start new projects that will broaden the scope of the site while keeping it focused on Making Tech Simpler. I’d already been planning on updating the site, and have been tweaking a theme refresh for a while, but couldn’t take the leap and go ahead and try the new theme.

First Year Update

Techinch started out as a WordPress.com-powered blog that I created for a class project in early 2009. I was dumbfounded that one post I wrote on adding a network printer to a Windows 7 x64 computer quickly rose to the top of Google for several related searches, and got around 100 views per day. I’d never considered doing tech writing as a job before that, but my writing professor pushed me to put my best work into my online writing, since you never knew what might come from it. Later that summer, I started writing at Labnol.org, and am very grateful to Amit Angarwal for giving me a chance and helping me get started writing on a larger scale.

Then, in January 2010, I moved my WordPress.com site to a self-hosted WordPress site and rebranded it as Techinch.com. I started out with a dark, smooth theme from ElegantThemes, and set to work getting more helpful content written than ever before. I started out adding AdSense, but quickly saw that the ads were seldom relevant to the content, cluttered the pages, and didn’t even pay out that much. That’s why I was so excited to be able to join the Yoggrt Ads network once the traffic had built up, and have been constantly pleased with the quality and content of the ads they serve.

Over the past year, Techinch’s content has been featured on a wide number of websites, from Lifehacker to Techcrunch’s Crunchgear blog, and my recent article about the iPad being like a microwave of computing was on the front page of Hacker News and Reddit’s Apple section for hours, and even mentioned on the 5by5 podcast and MacStories. Edit: And, in the past 2 days, it’s been featured on Wired.com and CNN, too! It’s been exciting and humbling to see my writing linked across the web, and has motivated me to keep writing quality articles and building Techinch.

 

Techinch.com 2.0 Beta

That brings us to today. The original theme for Techinch has served us well, but the default fonts and layout made it somewhat difficult to read. Hey, I even used Instapaper sometimes to clean up my own articles. That’s bad. Last winter, I’d invested in WooThemes Canvas theme with the intent of switching the site to a cleaner theme. Months later, I’ve finally bitten the bullet and switched to my own tweaked version of Canvas. Of all things, I chose an actual canvas-looking background, and then used Google Fonts to add character. So, the new theme you see is all new just for Techinch, and I think it really goes good with the site’s goals of making tech simpler. After all, if articles are difficult to read, it can’t be much simpler!

At the same time, I’ve made several other changes to the site over recent months. I added WPtouch Pro late last year, and the recent update brought iPad support as well, so Techinch should look great on any device. Now I’ve just got to port the new design to the mobile theme! Additionally, I was able to consolidate many of the plugins I use on Techinch with Automattic’s new Jetpack, and also started backing up the site with Automattic’s new VaultPress service (more on both soon). So, between WordPress and Automattic’s services, WooThemes, WPtouch, and DreamHost, the site’s in good hands and now I should be able to just focus on writing!

 

The Job is Never Finished

There’s still a lot that needs changed, but I personally think it’s heading in the right direction. Over the next days and weeks, I’ll be tweaking the theme and site more, especially:

• A new logo. Techinch really needs a new logo. If you’re a logo designer and would like to design it, I’d be excited to talk!
• Cleaning up the sidebar. I think it’d look better narrower, with less bright icons and smaller fonts. Thoughts?
• Fix the menus. They look awful right now. Please, don’t hover over them yet … it’ll hurt your eyes.
• Adding a search box. Just noticed that’s missing.
• Adding a Featured Post slider; for some reason, it’s not working in the theme right now. I’ll need to investigate that.
• Switching over most of the icons and theme images to the Pictos Font, since I’m using it with CSS @font-face on Techinch now.
• Making sure the typography is standardized throughout the theme. Right now, there’s still some Arial/Helvetica sticking out, especially in widgets.
• Add WooTumblog support, and then I’ll start sharing more links and small tips about tech right here on Techinch.
• Get the author box and site description updated.
• Tweak Techinch’s WPtouch Pro mobile themes to match the mothership’s theme!
• Add a MailChimp powered newsletter to Techinch so you can read without visiting the site.
• And more!

Let’s Talk!

So, this is your chance to give your opinion about Techinch.com. Do you like the new theme, or was the old one better in your opinion? What social sharing, read later, and bookmarking tools do you use regularly and want integrated? Evernote, Instapaper, Facebook, Twitter, or others? Do you think the fonts are easy to read now? If not, what would look better?

At any rate, it’s exciting to be pushing Techinch.com to the next level, and with the new theme design, I hope I can make more gradual changes and keep Techinch.com working great for years to come. Everything here is written to help you understand tech better and integrate it into your life without having to spend years learning it. If there’s every anything you’d like to see explained or reviewed, please let me know in the comments below or on the contact form. Thanks for reading, and here’s to many more years of tech tutorials, reviews, and more on Techinch.com!