The time has come for better things. I’m planning a site redesign for this site and for Wizkid Sound which I also maintain.

I’ve decided that Wordpress might not be the best option anymore, mainly because I’m not in need of all the features it offers. I’m looking for more simplicity, and I think Tumblr offers that. Getting started with Tumblr is really simple, and their website claims you can be up and posting in 10 seconds, which I can attest to. All you need to enter on their signup page is your email address, a password, and the URL you want (i.e. whatever.tumblr.com).

I’ll be using Disqus for commenting. The main advantage is that Disqus allows you to track conversations across multiple websites, meaning you don’t have to sign up on each blog you visit to comment (or leave anonymous comments).

I will be using Sweetcron for my “lifestream”, which includes Twitter posts, Flickr uploads, Youtube favorites, etc. Sweetcron checks the sites you specify at a specified interval and converts any new items it finds to individual posts. I’ve incorporated Sweetcron into Daniel Novick’s website.

Sweetcron is self-hosted, whereas Tumblr is not. However, a Tumblr blog can be embedded into a site, which is what I plan to do. I am currently using Dreamhost, but have a Slicehost account I have been playing with. I’m going to benchmark the two to get some sort of speed comparison. I’m hoping the Slicehost account will beat my Dreamhost account, because that means more geekery on the backend. I must be clear that I’m using the bottom account for both Dreamhost and Slicehost and that I’m confident upgrading either one would yield very different results.

The general theme is streamlining and centralizing, and I think this combination will help achieve that. I plan to use the same tools to build the new Wizkid Sound website, but with more media-specific elements including a music player and some sort of embedded Mogulus feed.

As for the design, well, I’m thinking Helvetica. That is all.