Yah New Look

As you have noticed (unless you’re reading the feed), the site has undergone a pretty hefty redesign. It’s been two years since the last new look, and as with people, sites start to look old.

Some Details

First: be sure to notice the lettering for the header image (the ‘W’, ‘o’, ‘o’, etc.). It was drawn by my nine-year-old daughter. How fantastic is that!? And my wife drew the now official Woolie T. mascot you see in the footer. I’m pretty fond of my family.

The actual content area is larger by a couple hundred pixels, and the sidebar along the right is correspondingly smaller. I didn’t want this blog to become a collection of sidebar widgets and ads that would overshadow and dominate the content.

Some posts will have an associated image to spice things up (on both the ‘front page’ view as well as the ’single page’ view). I used the Wordpress get_custom_values in the backend to add those images (some of which will be mine, most of which will be via the Creative Commons at Flickr). I’m pretty sure there’s a better way for me to use that feature (too may invidiual custom fields, I need to combine them into a single unit), but it works for now.

I really like (and am a bit proud of) the line that runs the length of the page, delimiting everything from the header to the footer posts and all the items in between. One of my original goals with this design was creating some sort of linking graphic like that….something that would tie the page together from top to bottom.

Comments look a ton nicer as well now, though there’s no new functionality (no replying to an individual post, comment feeds etc.).

Anyone reading this with IE6? Everything is basically visible and looks somewhat the same. The drop-down menu for “Categories” doesn’t work at all. but I don’t plan on I’m going to touch the IE6 specific style sheet again. Peace out.

Some ToDos

The sidebar, though pretty small now, still needs more items. I just don’t know what I want to put there yet. I’m trying to avoid too much of the standard stuff, because I want to keep it interesting. It will most likely become a sort of experimental spot at which I’ll throw new code.

The footer area is basically blank as well. It will probably end-up with some of the more standard sidebar type items (e.g blogroll). But again, I just don’t know.

I’d like to have something more dedicated to support for my Wordpress plugin (and any others I eventually create), but for now the WP forums is the best place to keep track.

Vote for Me

I hope those who stumble across this place enjoy the look. I’d like it to be a good first impression. If you’ve visited off-and-on in the past, then maybe the change will add a nice little jolt to your day.