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Redesign

February 7, 2008 - 10:56pm

I owe a HUGE thank you to my two amazingly awesome coworkers for helping me with a site redesign. You both have my unending gratitude! Every time I look at this site, I will smile and think of you. Thank you!

Matt Gist designed this amazing theme. Doesn't it look awesome?!

Josh Huckabee implemented the theme, installed Drupal, and moved all my old content from MovableType. What a lot of work and definitely something I couldn't have done on my own.

When I started this site in 2001, I was on a free Blogger account (Blogspot maybe?). I upgraded to a Pro Blogger account in order to get my own domain name. (At least I think it was a Pro account...hard to remember the details now.) Soon I met the amazing couple, Mena & Ben Trott, the developers of Movable Type and founders of Six Apart. I was so impressed with what they were doing that I migrated to Movable Type. For the past 5 or 6 years, I've been using Movable Type and I've been very happy. I know Six Apart worked very hard to continually improve the product even though I didn't personally use 1/3 of the features. I was always impressed by how easy they made upgrades, especially for someone as non-technical as myself.

For awhile now I've wanted a new design on my blog. Matt was wonderful enough to take on the task. I absolutely love the cactus graphic! Perfect for my love of the desert. Matt even helped with the HTML and CSS. Then I tried to implement the design into a Movable Type template. Unfortunately, this task turned out to be far, far above my technical abilities. I simply didn't have the knowledge of Movable Type any more and I didn't have the desire to learn. I'm just not a template designer.

The design languished on the back burner until Josh heard my frustration and offered to help. He's been working with Drupal for years and said it wouldn't be hard to integrate Matt's design into a Drupal template. The hardest part was migrating all my old posts and comments. But he worked hard and here was are! I'm still learning the application and tweaking things, but mostly I'm excited. It's great to have a shiny new page for my little corner of the web.

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Comments

Hey - looks really good! Love the graphic. :) love, Karen

Posted by Anonymous on February 8, 2008 - 8:36am

Wow! Looks spiffy! Tried to make Refresh, but didn't. Hopefully next time.

Karen of Scottsdale

Posted by Anonymous on February 9, 2008 - 4:31am

Wow, you never told me you met Mena & Ben! Well, hope you enjoy using Drupal as much as you did Movable Type. -Josh

Posted by Anonymous on February 9, 2008 - 5:29am

I love what you've done with the place! Yall did a really nice job re-desiging.

Posted by Anonymous on February 9, 2008 - 8:27pm

Wow! Great work on the redesign! Looks terrific. I'm sure you're excited to have a new space to work in - kind of like painting your office a new color or buying a new desk, right? :)

Posted by Cindy on February 11, 2008 - 4:42pm

Love the cactus! I'm about due for a redesign myself.

Posted by Andrew on February 16, 2008 - 9:30pm

Nice!

Posted by Brian on February 22, 2008 - 12:50am

Hey, you know what?
Your new look is awesome. Your graphic is quite spectacular. Right ON.

Posted by The Lighting Designer Guy on February 22, 2008 - 4:52am

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