I got some good advice from my friend Tess after my blog post yesterday. If I really want to shake off the negativity, I need to lighten up. Not just my content, but also my site design. I agree!! I’ve had that old design for a long time and really liked the idea of making a change. I had a lot of fun selecting just the right colors and fonts and layouts. I think the end result is bright and happy. I hope you like it, too.
In addition to a new look and feel, I made some changes to make navigating the site easier. On the main page, I ditched the boring Categories section and added an Archive by date and a Category Cloud instead. I moved the Creative Commons License to the footer, so it’s still on every page, but isn’t taking up space on the side bar.
My favorite addition, however, is content I’m starting to add to provide additional value for my readers. On the side bar, I’ve created a couple of lists for links – kind of like a custom blogroll. I follow around 600 blogs, so I thought I’d use some space to introduce my readers to some of my favorites. While I’ll likely keep a couple of links static, I really like the idea of rotating the list to highlight different blogs, and especially to give some newer blogs a little attention.
In addition to the links, I’m adding resource pages (where I may put some more permanent references to some of the top blogs in each of my industries. So far, I’ve added a resources page for Agile, and plan to add pages for Writing and User Experience, too. I’ll see how that goes and decide if everything still works together or if I need to think about creating more than one blog (one for writing and one for technology).
I hope you enjoy the changes and additions. I’m certainly open to comments and suggestions, too, so please feel free to send them my way!
Erika for President 
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