Gerard McGarry

A few weeks ago, I decided to rebuild this site using a minimalist template in order to see if it would affect the search engine rankings. So far, there's been no discernible impact, in case you're wondering.

However, I've been wondering if the stripped-down theme might have other benefits. Perhaps in terms of calls to action at the end of the post. I know that since changing the design, I've experienced more comment responses to the site, which I'm very grateful for.

But let's look at calls to action. For the uninitiated, we think of something a reader might want to do after reading an article. Other options might include:

• Subscribing to receive updates
• Following me on Twitter (very popular these days)
• Social media buttons (I'm not sold on the benefit of these)
• Advertising

Before I go on, I'm only keen to implement one call to action. I want to keep this simple, I don't want to baffle readers with tons of options. This has to be a focussed call to action with a measurable set of results.

Every now and then, you get an opportunity to be photographed at the brink of death. There's a shot of me apparently hanging from a cliff edge that's quite convincing (I was standing on a fairly reliable outcrop at the time).

I came across this shot, taken on holiday in Ibiza. I remember seeing the huge flight of steps and asking Lisa to go to the top and take a photo. By the time she got there and turned around to take the shot, I was lying on the ground.

Having not explained my intentions beforehand, she assumed I'd fallen over or something, so we had this shouted conversation where I explained that I wanted her shot to make it look like I'd just fallen down a flight of steps. And this is the end result.

I really like the idea of doing a series of gory near-death photos though: very Alice Cooper!

Back when Jake was a nipper, we took him up to Malone House for a fun day they were having. While Lisa got dragged off by Rachel for a spot of face painting I got left with Jake and the dog (dogs weren't allowed into the event because they had livestock).

Anyhow, we were messing around on the grass, and I hit upon the snazzy idea of forming words out of the bits of twigs that were lying around. It didn't take too long to craft Jake's name out and then lie him down beside my handiwork for this photo - one of my all-time favourites!

Tip: Use daisy heads to dot your "i"s.

If you ever travel to Fair Head, the cliff which overlooks Ballycastle, this is the kind of view you can expect. In the distance is Knocklayde, and to the left is one of the shimmering lakes that are hidden at the top of the cliff.

Looking down to the sea at roughly the middle of the picture, too far away to see clearly, the town of Ballycastle is nestled. Out of frame (far to the right of the picture) is Rathlin Island.

I'm telling you, there's nothing like being on top of Fair Head for a bit of serenity. It's virtually untouched, rarely visited except by other die-hards who'll exchange a few pleasantries with you before hiking on their way. The wind at the top can be fierce at times - it certainly was that day - but so exhilerating that it just makes the experience even better.

Since venturing up there a few years ago, it's become one of my favourite places to go and just walk and be at peace for a while.

The shrine of Our Lady of Ta' Pinu is located on the island of Gozo, a short ferry journey from Malta. It is located just outside the village of Gharb.

We traveled there by coach in the autumn of 2000. The inside of the basillica is extremely quiet and serene, and visitors are asked to cover up exposed flesh while inside - I think Lisa was provided with a wrap to cover her legs on the day (she was wearing shorts). It was quite nice to see the observation of old traditions back then, something which came across a lot during our visit to Malta.

A photo from back in November 2000, the first big holiday Lisa and I ever took. We stayed near St Julian's in Malta and one day took this brilliant cruise around the bay, which was just so relaxing.

Back then, we didn't have a car, so we walked everywhere around the place, took bus tours and little cruises like this one. There were no prams to push, no deadlines to meet and we simply explored the island at our leisure.

There's something irresistable about the architecture of those buildings, the little first floor balconies and the ornate arches and distant domed roofs.

November's a funny time to go for a holiday as well. Well, it was back then. We were the youngest couple travelling amongst a group of silver surfers and blue rinses from the UK mainland: part of the group was massive good fun, and part were such a curmudgeonly bunch, you wonder why they bothered to leave home in the first place.

Probably because they'd run out of things to grump about...

Here's another quick Drupal 6 tip: if you have the Update Status module enabled, you can get notifications by email when updated modules for your site are available.

This is a handy thing to have, particularly for security updates. As I understand it, the Update Status module periodically checks against the Drupal website (on each cron run) and will notify you if updates are available. I think it only checks activated modules though, so if there are updates to inactive modules, it won't notify you.

If you were reading a couple of weeks back, I was musing about the effectiveness of minimalist blog designs and their impact on search engine optimisation.

The basic notion was that by eradicating all the extra stuff on the page and just displaying the page and the bare minimum of navigational links, you could improve search engine relevance and as a result, rank higher for any given search term. Why? Because, providing that the content is well written and follows the principles of good titling and semantic markup, there will be less irrelevant garbage on the page to confuse a search engine.

This follows on from the current discussion surrounding Twitter's value in terms of SEO - literally just the title and the content are displayed, along with a handful of navigational links back to the member profile.

My Experiment

I've decided to create a standard, one-column Drupal theme that only displays the content and not much else. I've left interlinking to the standard Drupal categories, but removed sidebars, Twitter statuses and anything else not relevant to the content.

Something that bugs me in Ubuntu is the default text size for window titles and desktop icons - it's far too big. How do you change it?

Well, in Ubuntu 8.10, you browse to the System -> Preferences -> Appearance programme, and on the Fonts tab, you should be able to set the font size to your liking. I shrunk the font down to 8. I think this is pretty readable and saves a bit of space on screen.

Of course, while you're in the Appearance programme, you can modify the actual display fonts for your screen and whether they're bold or italic.

There you go, another quick tip. Hope this helps some of you out.

I've read a few interesting blog posts recently about minimalist blog designs. Specifically this Tutorial9 post showcasing streamlined designs, and more recently this Devlounge article by Dustin Boston.

I love the idea of thoroughly streamlined designs, where the content is virtually the only thing on the page.

In a web where sites are drowning in navigation, widgets and advertising, cutting out the visual nonsense seems appealing. One of my favourite sites at the moment is Brainz, a website where the article takes precedence. Apart from the logo at the top and some minor links at the bottom, the content (in huge letters) is the only thing on the page. No sidebars, no distractions, no noise.

Now, I would never consider a design like this without thinking about the impact on SEO.