Well, it’s been a week, and I think I have the bugs ironed out, so I want to know what you think of the new look (If you’re reading this from a feed, you can click here to see it). Take a look around, There are new page links at the top (I like the gallery, but Lauren doesn’t). The categories are in the menu below the logo (Most Popular…) And there are some new things items in the tabs to the right (I really like the Tags, but Lauren does not share the love).
In fact, Lauren was pretty indifferent to the idea of changing things. I believe her exact words were, “Quit bothering me. Get me a soda.” I took that as permission to go ahead. There were a few things that I didn’t like about the old look, And I tried to fix those with a new theme and assorted new plugins:
- We were starting to accumulate a fair number of pages, but there was no good way to access them.
- There was no way to highlight the few posts (roughly one in a hundred) that were popular.
- I wanted to add new things (tags, delicious links…) to the sidebar, but still keep it short.
- I wanted cool gravatars like Brad’s site.
- Added a few little additions like ‘subscribe to comments’ and ‘social bookmarking’ that will never get used.
- Find some way to get our names on the homepage without being obnoxious about it.
I looked at a lot of themes, and ended up getting one from woo themes. It was pretty easy to customize, and I didn’t really have to do much to it anyway. Most of the changes I made were to get threaded comments looking okay.
I like the way the tabs turned out, and I love the way the gravatars look like little Polaroid instant pictures (I just lucked into that by breaking something else). I don’t really like the way the logo turned out at the top, so if you do logos, send me a better one.
I would really like to know what you think is worse than before (and anything you like too).
