You might notice things look a little different around here. I’m giving my blog a much-needed facelift. Granted, I’m not done yet, but I’m just setting the stage for some new fancy designs that are on their way (with the assistance of the amazingly awesome @ashleymarie6).
New theme
First major overhaul item was switching to the Thesis theme. It appears that all the truly ‘leet WordPress folks are all about Thesis…or at least that’s what Doniree tells me. It’s not so much a theme as it is an entire framework. It’s super customizable, although it takes a bit of hacking to really find your way around. But just playing around with the configuration options has already gotten me to some things that I totally dig. For example – those little “teasers” for past blog posts on the bottom of the page. I like those.
Cleaning up the junk
You might recall…my blog generally quickly turns into a big mess of sidebar cruft. Every now and then it’s time to go through it and really optimize what is over there. I removed a lot of junk, and added a “Featured Posts” section. That area still needs a lot of style redesign, but at least the content has been streamlined.
Linky love
Another change is the removal of the Blogroll from every single page on the site. It’s been moved to a dedicated page under the “Links” menu up on top. Those of you who are in my blogroll might fear this is going to impact the Google juice you get from me, but I really don’t think it will be that determental. Plus, it just makes my pages look a lot cleaner.
I’ve added another link page – the Social Networking page. This contains links to my profiles on popular social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. It’s still a work in progress, but it’s a start.
I’ll be adding more link pages as well, specifically one with photography links and technology links.
What’s next?
Ashley is working on a new header for me, and she’s got a lot of recommendations for redesign, so don’t get too comfortable with my look and feel. I’m also going to keep tweaking the Featured Content area as well (there are some cool options for displaying Featured Content with Thesis that I’m going to explore).
What do you think of the changes so far? Any suggestions? Anything you think REALLY needs to be fixed? Let me know in the comments!
