VirusHead

I’ve been playing around with the theme so it doesn’t look so much like the original Sea Beast theme. I love the way this is coded, but I wanted to have my own images and some different colors. There was too much grey and orange for me. I wanted to bring out the blue, and add some unexpected colors here and there. Also, I noticed that my blogroll carnival was hard to read. There wasn’t enough contrast.

The latest playing-around session (what I’ll do to avoid cleaning the kitchen floor) resulted in a new sidebar. I’m not a graphic artist, and I’ve noticed that I can’t seem to get the really crisp images I see elsewhere on the net. I should probably be using Illustrator instead of Photoshop. Still, I like this, at least for now.

Here’s what it looked like before, and after.

I also added gravatar display for the comments. If you don’t have a gravatar, it displays my new nifty default image.

I’m trying again to add tags to my posts. So far, the categories are acting like tags, but I wanted more of a cross-reference on specific topics.

I’m using a WordPress plugin called Ultimate Tag Warrior.

Unfortunately I’ve now got to add the tags to over a thousand posts, so I’ll be working backward, adding them in as I have time. I’ve added a “tag cloud” to the footer of the page, and each post will have site-linked tags. I may also add Technorati tags at some future point. I’m not sure how the tag page that has been added to the sidebar is meant to be integrated, but I’ll figure it out soonest.

Thought it was about time to lighten up the blog’s appearance. The dark reds were kind of depressing, and I’m really looking forward to spring. This is a little more basic in appearance. I may add more in the way of graphics, but this will do for now. I feel more cheerful already.

I’ve decided to go with a new service – Feedblitz – to deliver my rss feed in email format.

This one looks like a big improvement. I was able to import my subscriptions from Bloglet (where delivery was too unreliable), so anyone who was getting emails from there will notice a change.

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I just looked at this blog in Internet Explorer! Nobody told me that the layout breaks in IE.

 I have been using Firefox, and it looks fine, but in IE – eek, yikes!

 I will try to find out how to fix this. Suggestions are welcome.