featuring technology tips and music recommendations with a personal touch

I'm really going to miss the old design. It was a 1-column simple and beautiful layout called Black Minimalism. However, it had too many flaws, some of which:

• Looks horrible on IE 6
• Bandwidth whore
• No support for widgets
• Being a 1-column, it makes you miss out on potential subscribers. Had it been two column, the arrangement could be made so that subscription options are more visible and easier to spot.

So I knew someday I had to give it up one day and, well, today is the day!

Introducing a new theme based on the popular WordPress K2, and a custom style to the latter called Jolie. I must have browsed about a a hundred theme before adopting and customizing this one. What I liked about it is its simplicity yet level of sophistication (read, Ajax) that it delivers. Also, the two column layout is handy when you want to organize your stuff for better visibility.

Some of the customization I've done on this theme were:

• Header image (yes that is me).
• Subscription options at the top.
• Blog statistics sidebar on the homepage with a link to the full page.
• Search engine optimization in the HTML header tags used throughout the theme.
• Miscellaneous style changes (my favorite is the alternating color on the sidebar which makes the items more readable)

Overall, so far I'm really satisifed on the performance and usability of this theme. But what matters is what YOU think. I'm sure many of my readers use different browsers on different platforms. So what's your experience so far?

Finally, to celebrate the new look, in the next post I'll bring you an awesome new song by a really really popular rock band from an album that will be released soon. This one will blow you away. So stay tuned!

Update 6/7/2007: A new version (1.1) of the plugin is now available. This version is a major rewrite of the old one aimed at simplifying the number of choices and adding the following features:

• A “welcome-back” message for returning visitors.
• Ability to embed a visitor’s name and MyBlogLog avatar anywhere in either the welcome or welcome-back message. Special thanks to Andrea Micheloni’s “Welcome back” plugin for inspiring this feature.

I’ve mashed up a plugin that lets you put out a message anywhere on your blog for new visitors, and hide it for returning visitors. A little background is in order: I’m generally dissatisfied with the way most current blogs are set up. When a new visitor wanders in, what he usually finds is a collection of seemingly random posts with no quick way to tell what’s the blog’s all about and who’s behind it. This information is usually present in some sort of an ’About’ page up there on the menu. While that’s fine for lengthy background and author bio, what’s missing on the front page is a prominent warm welcome message that greets the new reader and gives him a quick overview of the blog. The purpose of this message isn’t only to inform, it has a subtle effect of making a new “hostile” reader who’s ready to scan the entire blog page in mere seconds a little comfortable and willing to spend some more time exploring the rest of the blog. Ultimately, what we want to do is get the reader’s attention, make him feel welcomed, and give him few tips on where to find stuff on the blog. In my opinion, this has a much higher chance of converting new readers into regular ones on the first visit.
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