Some notes on my new website

Hi, I’m Duncan Stephen. You may remember me from such blogs as doctorvee, vee8, Scottish Roundup (still going strong under different owners), and Stepreo.

Over the years, I had to drop my commitments to running these blogs for a variety of reasons. But I still need an outlet of some sort. I still want to blog. So here it is. But I am trying a new approach in an attempt to tackle the problems I have run into in the past.

Not really a blog

The blog format does not necessitate posting regularly and frequently, but it does create the pressure to do so. Knowing that people will visit, and the first thing they see might be a post that is four or six weeks old, or even older, is embarrassing.

So my new website is not really a blog. This is more of a website with an articles section. I have designed it to put less emphasis on the blog. So if I’m particularly busy, the front page doesn’t look bad with an ancient post in centre stage.

Keeping a lid on the eclecticism

Another problem I had with the old blog was that I covered lots of different topics. I knew for a fact that a lot of my blog’s readers found some of my articles interesting, but had no interest in a lot of my other articles.

I have designed this new website so that people that come for articles on one topic are only presented with information relevant to that topic. Related articles should only return items from the same category. The other elements of the sidebar will also be tailored to the topic.

There will generally be less emphasis on the idea of it being one blog. There is no point in pretending that most readers will be interested in most of the content I publish here. Instead of plodding on uncomfortably, I will embrace that fact. Hopefully it will also make me feel more at ease about posting more regularly.

Dropping the pseudonyms

Calling a blog doctorvee seemed like a great idea when I was 16. I guess I never imagined I’d keep it running so long into my adult life.

Although most people told me the name wasn’t so bad, it still makes me cringe. Last year I decided to stop updating doctorvee, and I started a new blog called Stepreo. But after a while I began to get fed up with that as well. That is why I have decided to use my actual real name as the name of my new website.

I have owned duncanstephen.net for several years, but I have never really known what to do with it. I have mostly used it as a place for me to experiment with new design ideas, and using it to present information about my work. But I had been under-utilising it. Now I have decided to host my blog here, as well as the information about my work.