A General Plan for the Molecular Universe
The Molecular Universe site grew out of talks for schools. The talks generated text and graphical material and this formed the topics in the main part of the site. As often happens, work was put into the site inconsistently and the site languished for a number of years. I am now trying to improve that situation...(as they say). Initial work to write and collect pages for the site was done working with a distinguished collaborator. Subsequently, on occasion, I created new articles about molecules, chemistry, and materials science, and these articles formed parts of the blog system.
Mostly the site has been 'for fun'. Although the site has adverts, they generate far less than it costs to host the site. But it is an interesting activity and I hope somewhat informative site, and so I have kept it going.
Now I figured, why not move it forward?!
So, to do that, here is a basic outline of what I intend to do:
- Move the text over to a somewhat cleaner format. In the past the text and formatting were terribly intermingled making it hard to correct the text. The new system will be somewhat clearer about separating raw data and style...I hope.
- Consolidate various blogs into one place - on occasion over the years I posted what I thought at the time was useful information in a variety of places, like blogger. Now, I think I will consolidate here on this site. This will make maintenance more straightforward - should maintenance ever be needed. It will also be a chance to throw out the out of date material!
- Improve usability for devices like smartphones. The old fashioned style of the site was not easy to use with a small screen. The new style should be better.
- Meld the newer molecule articles in the blog with the main text.
- Give up on some old and bad ideas: e.g. a DIY search engine, strange indexing concepts, and an idiosyncratic approach to dealing with images.
- Put some effort into applying categories to existing entries.
Well, that is the plan. We shall see how it goes.