Michael Janzen

I recently did a little redesign of my most popular blog TinyHouseDesign.com. My hope was to give it more than a more professional appearance. My primary goals were actually to increase site stickiness and improve ad revenue. Both these goals were accomplished by making the site easier to navigate and easier for users to discover older content. Here’s what I did:

• Added category links at the top of the page.
• Created a long column of 150×150 thumbnail images.
• Included related posts after each post.
• Increased the number of posts per page from 3 to 10.

All of these changes help people stick around a little longer since there is more to see. I could have done these navigation changes with the same old theme but I really like this new one and you should see the simple code. I love simplicity.

It’s midnight and I think I’m done reworking the UI of tiny house design. My main concern wasn’t the look & feel but the navigation. One of the biggest problems with a blog, by nature, is it’s ability to hide away old content. But the beauty of the WordPress CMS (and I think it deserves to be called that) is it’s flexibility. Anyway take a look.

This is a pretty cool day for me; I’ve never been in the New York Times before. A few months ago I started a little project, actually a tiny free house project, in an attempt to better understand my own values. I had also been admiring the people behind the tiny house movement for the freedom they have achieved. I wanted to built a tiny house too but do it with a different spin. My first tiny house would be free and made from reclaimed and recycled stuff. In fact I’m building it from mostly trashed wood pallets. You can follow my progress on my Tiny Free House blog.

If you’re interested in tiny house design I’ve got a blog on that too, tinyhousedesign.com. But by all means read the article in the New York Times. Photo credit, New York Times.