New Years Renovations

Template Change
It's been more than a year since we switched to this template, and I'm getting a hankering to apply some major renovations. Any comments you care to make before I hit the button, now is the time to do it. Should I get an 88% clear vote, then I'm liable to do a John Key. Hey, you think we are in a democracy? Whatever gave you that impression? OK, OK, unlike John Key, maybe I will listen to the people.

What do my fellow authors think about a template switch, and how involved would you like to be in the process? I haven't checked my email in months, but I will do so (or drop a comment). If the 88% includes the cabinet (and we are all Prime Ministers) then feel free to smack me about the ears until you get what you want. It's not as if a light smack is a crime or anything. (Well, OK, depends on who you ask, and at what time of the day but now you are quibbling)

I'd really like to have different style sheets based on the screen resolution - one for iPhones, one for standard resolution and one that grows to handle the increasingly common large screen displays. I'm not sure the blogger community is that sophisticated as yet, without bulk custom work, but worth a look.

It would be very cool to create a proper "NZ Conservative" graphic and logo, and incorporate that into the template. It would provide a more distinctive look. Ideas for what this could look like are invited. A virtual chocolate fish for the best ideas.

Categories
Also, I am looking at refining the categories and try to use them to better advantage. Based on blogging statistics for people searching our category labels, they are not often used. I want them to be used though, so it's a matter of exploiting them differently.

As a general rule, we do not need categories for something that will come up in a text search. For example, searching on "David Bain" would get more items than the "David Bain" tag, simply because we may not always tag things as thoroughly.

Indeed, a tag for Bain is not really required for this reason. Therefore, our tags may work better if we use them for directing readers to posts that get high reader counts, even after they scroll off the page.

Ideally, there's a way of implementing categories with sub categories, but failing this linking categories to display post summaries based on hot topics, particular themes or high reads may be a more useful use of the sidebar.

Other Ideas
What other ideas are there to incorporate? Something radical, like a move to Wordpress and our own domain, or something less radical like more use of the colour blue? Comments invited.