Well, the new design is up and for the most part I’m pleased with how it’s turned out. It wouldn’t be a redesign if it wasn’t still in need of some further refinement and tweaking. Over the course of the next three days I’ll be tweaking, refining, and completing this theme.

Before that happens, I’d like to give some credit where credit is due! My good friend and Wordpress hacker, Keith Solomon is responsible for things working properly. He’s an incredibly gifted Wordpress developer and I would encourage you to contact him if you’re looking for work done on your Wordpress install.

Like all themes I tend to run, I don’t start from scratch (although, I suspect this will change moving forward). This theme is heavily modified – I used the wpcandy theme created by Michael Castilla. It’s a great theme with a lot of effort behind it. I just wanted to put my stamp on it and make it my own – which I would encourage you to do as well.

With this latest iteration, I’ve tried to focus more on framing the content while still retaining some of the major elements of the previous design. For whatever reason, I never really cared for the last design. It was a more minimalistic type design which I tend to prefer. Having said that, I’m not a good minimal-type designer. I’m more of a clean, sweat the small details kind of guy. I like what I like and you need to stay true to what you do well and not try to pound a square peg into a round hole because someone else can do it – effortlessly. I can’t, I admit it, I’ve accepted it and I’m working within that limitation.

One of the key areas I’ve not touched (yet) but, will get a lot of attention in the coming days is the archive page. I have some really stellar ideas on how I’d like to see that display and I’m excited to start exploring that page more – I doubt I’ll get to it within the next three days as this weekend is about making sure most things validate, it’s standards compliant, and most of the major, details related elements are presentable. I threw it up not yet complete to kind of pressure myself to get it done. The other reason is, well… I didn’t think the five regular visitors to this site would really mind all too much.

Once all the details are done and presentable, I’ll probably start on switching out the typography. While it reads fine, I’m going for a more elegant but, not over done style. I’ve not tried out any of the hosted typography platforms yet and I’m undecided if I will. From what I’m hearing, there are still issues to work out platform-wise with them and I’m not looking to make readers suffer the performance hit that this site is likely to incur as a result. If anyone has recommendations or wants to share their experience, please leave a comment or, feel free to send me an email. I’d love to hear more from people on this exciting movement on the web.

The only other part of this design I’d like to have a little fun with is displaying an artists’ photos in the rotating image section on the homepage. The Wordpress community has some incredibly talented people and I thought it would be a great way to keep the design fresh while also benefiting an artist or two. If you’re interested in having some of your work displayed in the rotating image script on the hompage, send me an email.

In the coming days I also plan to move hosting providers. I’ve not settled on a provider yet. If anyone can recommend a reliable host that offers great, reliable, fast hosting – please leave a recommendation in the comments or send me an email. I’m not at all happy with my current provider and I’m looking to make a change, sooner rather than later.