Slightly belatedly, because it went live more than a week ago, welcome to my spruced up, redesigned blog. I love it. And I hope you love it too: let me know.
The blog functionality is powered by WordPress: a free bit of open source software that I can’t praise highly enough. Not only is it superbly optimised for search engines, the versatility of the program and the slick backend make it a pleasure to use.
The theme (or the design if you like) is a customised version of Brightness that has been expertly tweaked and personalised by my good mate Sue (she’ll probably be best known to you as one of the founders of Tamebay). She has blogged about the design process (very generously) here.
Sue and I discussed a lot of ideas for the design but in the end these two images shaped her work.
(Incidentally, if anyone knows where I can find a copy of the Hillary poster by Tony Puryear, I’d be eternally grateful.)
Sue also did the hard work of installing WordPress and the theme and has been a great source of wisdom and advice. In return, I’ve promised that I’ll blog 100 times before the end of the year. So if I seem rather more active between now and then, that’s why. Sue’s superb posts regarding WordPress on Tamebay can be found here:
The Normal Person’s Guide to Installing WordPress
The Normal Person’s Guide to WordPress Themes
The Normal Person’s Guide to WordPress Plugins
But is this sort of thing worth doing, or is it just vanity? I reckon. The reinstall, a clean-up of some spammy hackery and some new content means that I’ve surged up the Google results in the past week. For the first time, I’m number 1 result on Google UK and on the first page of Google.com for my name. The challenge now is to stay there. Allons-y!
Good work Sue.
The Hillary poster inspiration reminded me of an article I’d read recently about the Barack Obama logo and its use on his website:
http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/004262.html
Note to self: Obama themed Xmas tree this year?
I really like your new theme. Excellent job Sue